Ruby Rose, Engineer Extraordinaire - Paused
by Kaiimei
Summary: Tumbling through a mysterious portal was not Ruby's plan, nor was it to end up in the middle of a war between humans and aliens on a different planet. With her aura gone and Crescent Rose left at home, Ruby is swept up by Chief Engineer Shen immediately for her love of engineering and weaponsmithing, and together, there's nothing they can't build. - Faunus Ruby.
1. Chapter 1

**That's right! I'm doing this again!**

**Okay, okay, put the pitchforks down. When I get an idea in my head like this, it's either I write it out, or it burns my head until I forget about it. I will probably do this quite a few times, and while these stories aren't just one-shots, they will only be uploaded when I get around to it, unless they get incredibly popular or something.**

**Plus, I had a hankering for XCOM 2 and, well, with the amount of RWBY fanfiction I've been devouring, making a crossover fic was necessary. This fanfiction will follow the same rules as Feathered Rose, I'll write it when I want and for as long as I want as evidenced by the chapter length, the longest one I've ever written.**

**Well, on with the chapter...**

_**Chapter 1**_

* * *

"Ruby?"

At the sound of the door to his private workshop opening, Chief Engineer Shen called out over his shoulder, eyes never leaving the delicate process he was going through, carefully positioning and adjusting minute components in the device sat before him.

"Yeah Shen?" Ruby asked in her casual way, adamantly refusing to call him anything other than Shen, or sometimes Raymond if absolutely necessary. Peering over his shoulder, Ruby had to do a double-take at the little machine he was assembling, her hands flying up to her mouth to stifle the squeeing noise she very nearly let out at how a machine could look simultaneously beautiful, deadly, and adorable, all in one bundle. "Are those anti-gravity panels?!"

Chuckling, Shen placed the last of the components into position, laying down his tools to look at the excitable red-haired girl practically hopping around behind him. "Yes, they are actually. I believe we actually have you to thank for getting these here undamaged."

Wincing at the memory, Ruby could only give a sheepish smile. "Well, if we left it up to the regulars, the Cyberdisc components would all just be molten slag." Striking a heroic pose with one fist pressed across her back and her other hand clasped against her chest, Ruby smiled at Shen. "Only I am capable of such finesse!" And immediately breaking her stance to laugh at Shens bewildered face.

"I fear I shall never get used to you, Ruby."

* * *

**_Some Time Earlier_**

* * *

As Ruby glanced around her little private workshop, tucked away in a corner of Beacon where nobody would bother her, she had many thoughts, none of which were that this would be the last time in a long time, potentially forever, that she'd lay eyes on it. The spare blades for Crescent Rose hanging from the wall, the reloading workbench covered in dust phials and casings, the spare metal for projects, the earmuffs she'd oh so carefully modified for her own personal needs. All of it screamed home to Ruby, and she knew every piece of it intimately. Lifting her sweetheart from its position on her back and laying it down reverently atop one of the few benches scattered around the workshop, extending it into scythe form and slowly taking it apart.

It had been a while since she'd done a full disassembly of her beloved weapon, and it showed. Several of the more hidden components were visibly worn, with even fewer still showing dangerous signs of potential breakage. In a mecha-shift weapon, especially one as complicated as Crescent Rose, having a single component fail was almost always a guarantee of complete failure if she tried to switch the weapons form. The most common failure would simply be that the weapon would jam during the process, but she'd heard tales of some weapons violently exploding as residual dust was released into the moving parts and ignited, which would be a death sentence in the middle of a fight against Grimm, a fate Ruby would prefer to avoid.

The moment her weapon was in pieces on a workbench, she began cataloguing all the parts which were damaged, setting them aside and making plans to either make the parts herself, or order in the more specialized parts, when her scroll went off with a shrill cry, making Ruby's ears twitch uncomfortably, informing the crimsonette that Ozpin had requested her presence in his office immediately.

Sighing, Ruby laid down the part she was inspecting, throwing a last look around and sighing at the work she'd have to do to get her beloved back into tip-top shape, before leaving the room, locking it behind her with her scroll and making her way at a brisk pace towards the tower.

On the way there, however, Ruby was stopped by a glowing red light appearing from a gap between two of the school buildings, and something that vaguely sounded like people talking. Shrugging her shoulders, Ruby entered the gap, taking a step back when she saw a red portal hovering a foot in the air in front of her, and could hear voices that sounded normal, though garbled somehow, sort of like when she tried talking to Qrow just using her scroll and he was too far away. Taking slow steps forwards, Ruby tried peering through the portal, though it appeared to be simply a black tunnel going to absolutely nowhere.

Noting this, Ruby resolved to inform Ozpin about the portal when she saw him. While she would normally have been plenty happy about jumping through a mysterious portal to who knows where, she didn't have her team with her, they all went to Vale for something, and her sweetheart was currently sat in a million pieces on her workbench.

Before she could even turn around the portal, as if noticing her intentions to leave, darted forwards and engulfing her in darkness, a pure darkness her eyes couldn't pierce and her voice was lost in, so she screamed for as long and hard as her body could until the darkness invaded her mind, and she fell unconscious.

* * *

"SHUT IT DOWN!"

The loud shout was heard throughout most of the Anthill, immediately placing every operative in the base on high alert, as that voice was very familiar as the voice of Central Officer Bradford, and if the yell was any indication, something had to have gone horribly wrong. Indeed, as many of the operatives noted with some worry, today was the day that Chief Engineer Shen, Chief Science Officer Vahlen, and Bradford had agreed to attempt activation of the Hyperwave Relay. If something had gone wrong with the device, any number of things could happen, from broadcasting the HQ location to the aliens to ripping a black hole through the base.

The situation in the room itself wasn't much better. Bradford was the image of fury, yelling at those present to get the device turned off, all the while Dr Vahlen was arguing with him, countermanding his orders and trying to convince the man to let the device run for a few more moments.

The strangest sight though was the unwavering focus on Engineer Shen's face, as he stared at the Relay intently, as if willing it to reveal its secrets. When Vahlen managed to convince Bradford to give the device some time, she noticed Shen's focus and warily drew his attention to her with a hand on his shoulder.

Startled, Shen whipped his head around, only to note that it was Vahlen interrupting him, though the worried look on her face managed to slightly confuse him until she gestured towards the device, which was still humming, whirring, and making any number of odd and un-planned sounds and movements. Realizing her worries at his object of attention, he merely shrugged, returning his attention to the device.

Noting down his odd actions for later study, Vahlen also returned her own attentions to the device, determined to observe every possible change occurring in the device, when the device lifted itself from its housing in a violent and ear-piercing cacophany, before seemingly collapsing inwards on itself in an utterly impossible way, and a red tear appeared in front of it, immediately startling the occupants of the room, who all, with the exception of Dr Vahlen and Engineer Shen, took wary steps backwards, all the while observing the new phenomena intently for hostility.

The suspense was palpable, and made worse when a sound not unlike a human screaming could be heard coming from the tear and getting louder by the moment, cutting out when it was about to reach an unbearable level, and the tear itself shifted, contorting and rippling, before spitting out a red and black object and abruptly snapping shut, taking the entire remains of the Hyperwave Relay with it and leaving the object in its place.

Warily, the occupants of the room observed the object, Shen and Vahlen slowly approaching it and noting with an audible gasp from Shen and widened eyes from Dr Vahlen that the object was in fact a young girl, seemingly little more than 15, draped in a red cloak with gothic style black and red clothing, and a small river of blood running down her head somewhere in the region of her left eye from how she'd landed atop the scrap metal remnants of the Relay.

The strangest part about the otherwise normal girl, however, was the pair of red-tipped wolf ears that twitched lightly and seemingly at random.

Immediately, and with typical regard for standard safety protocols, Vahlen took the first opportunity to dash over to the unconscious girl, ignoring all the weapons trained in their direction, and began making observations of her, noting practically everything down in one of her many notepads, murmuring to herself, and paying extra attention to her extra appendages.

"Dr Vahlen!" Central's voice cut through the pervading silence, stopping the enthusiastic doctor in her tracks, as she stopped writing to look up from her position next to the girl, and had the decency to at least look sheepish at the total breach of protocol. "I understand your enthusiasm, but if that was an act to draw us in, you'd be being torn apart right now, Doctor."

"My apologies Central, but it's fascinating. The device appeared to fold into itself, despite physically being incapable of inhabiting a space that small without merging matter together. And this humanoid. While I am wary to call it such, preliminary examination seems to indicate that, whoever she is, she's at least close to being human. Of course, I'll need to analyse the subject before any promises can be made, but it appears that, for some reason, the device has brought us this modified girl."

Rubbing his eyes, Central looked around the room, gesturing towards two operatives who seemed at least somewhat less jumpy than the rest. "You two, take the subject to Vahlen's holding cell. If it wakes up and is hostile or uncooperative, attempt to subdue it with Arc Throwers, and if absolutely necessary use lethal force. I'd rather keep whoever that is alive. The rest of you are dismissed, I need to report this to the Commander. I expect reports of what happened within the hour Vahlen."

* * *

The first thing Ruby could sense was a ringing sound. The kind of ringing she'd hear if she fired Crescent Rose too much without protecting her hearing. After a few moments however, Ruby was wishing her senses stayed muted, as a throbbing headache made itself known, feeling like an Ursa was smacking her in the head, and at the same time, her eye felt like somebody took an Ice Cream scoop to it. It was times like these she hated the extra hearing her wolf ears afforded her, as they magnified the sound to a horrendous degree.

When she tried to open her eyes, Ruby felt a cold chill run over her body when her right eye opened like normal, but her left eyelid felt like something was attached to it, and try as gingerly as she might, she couldn't get it to open.

Her attempts were immediately stalled when Ruby saw her current location. A small circular black room, with a bright blue light above her, the only furnishing being the small white cot bed she was laying in. Wincing at the light, Ruby walked to the wall and tapped it, stepping back when she realized she was surrounded in glass, meaning she was probably looking at one-way glass.

"H-Hello?" She asked quietly, pressing against the glass and hoping to see something through the glass, anything to indicate she was talking to somebody. "Hello? Is anybody out there?" Asking again, Ruby strained her ears, pressing the top of her head against the glass and listening intently for any sounds, any vibrations, anything at all, but to no avail, as all she could hear was her own whining breaths.

Huffing, Ruby instead looked herself over, happy to note that she was still wearing the outfit she had on when she left her workshop, though her bullets were missing and some of the clothing was a bit ruffled, which meant she'd been searched while she was unconscious, a thought which made Ruby shiver. Looking at her arms, Ruby noted a bandage was wrapped around one of her arms, a small piece of gauze being held in place, so Ruby at least knew that whoever was holding her didn't want her to die from infection of an open wound. Raising her hands to her ears, she quickly ran her fingers delicately over them, sighing when she couldn't feel anything abnormal there.

Heading back over to her cot, she sat cross-legged on it, wrapping her red cloak around herself for comfort as much as warmth, breathing deeply of the slight smell of home and keeping her ears sharp for sound, and letting her openable eye drift closed, though it snapped open again at the reminder that one of her eyes refused to open.

Feeling around her eye, Ruby could feel a long divot carved through her skin, starting above her eye and ending below it, the divot disappearing on her eyelid and continuing below her eye. She could also feel what felt like either staples or stitches running along her eyelid, holding it closed.

Feeling her panic rising slightly, Ruby was grateful for a distraction, in the form of a very light hissing sound, followed by a regular clanking sound of boots on metal, and watching as a section of the glass cylinder she was contained in rose up, revealing a walkway and a small group of people stood watching her. Several of them looked like Atlesian soldiers, in rigid uniforms and with what looked kind of like large pistol-gripped cameras held in ready stances, their weapons aimed a few inches wide of their feet.

The others looked more unique though. At the head of the group was a man in a green commando sweater over what looked like a white shirt and tie, an insignia on his left breast, his hands clasped behind him. On one side of him was a woman with a lab-coat and a green turtleneck with the same insignia as the man, a blocky-looking scroll in her hands, which she was currently noting stuff down into, glancing up at Ruby every few moments. And, on the other side of the man, was an elderly man with a red tie and a jacket over a white shirt, and an id badge hanging from the left lapel of his jacket.

Out of everyone present, Ruby immediately decided she liked him the most, as he had a small smile on his face, whereas everybody else seemed to just have frowns permanently attached to their faces. Plus he had remnants of oil and grease on his hands, and Ruby could tell that despite his best attempts to wash it off, it was the kind that built up from actually working on weapons and tech. Ruby had encountered the same problem working on Crescent Rose all the time, and saw more than once as Yang furiously scrubbed at her hands to get bike liquids off her hands.

A polite cough interrupted Ruby's inspection of them, she looked back at the man in the centre, who seemed to regard her with a mix of suspicion and interest.

"Apologies for the rough room and board, it's not every day an alien artifact folds into itself and deposits an abnormal human girl on our doorstep." At the word alien, Ruby's face scrunched up, a fact definitely not missed by her observers. "I'm sorry, but does alien mean something different to you? Vahlen told me you probably speak English, but we can't be 100% sure about it without speaking to you."

"I...I know what alien means, but what do you mean, English?" Ruby asked, tilting her head.

"Well, we're speaking English right now." Central responded quickly, watching as the girl in front of him let her face run through the full set of confused emotions. "I hate to say this, but...well, the easiest way to put this is to just ask. Do any of these words mean anything to you: Earth, America, England, France, Japan, Germany, Africa, China, Russia, India?" And watched as Ruby shook her head at them all.

"I mean, earth is another name for dirt, but aside from that, none of those words mean anything to me, why?"

Shaking his head, Central rubbed his forehead, trying to think of the best way to break the news to this girl. However, he needn't have bothered, as, quite surprisingly, Shen stepped forwards with a sad smile on his face. "It means you are probably a long way from home. Wherever you came from, you probably aren't on the same world any more. And, before you ask, we cannot send you back. The anomaly which brought you here can only be replicated if we find another of the same device, and after the hell our operatives went through to retrieve it, I doubt we'll ever find another, not unless we defeat the aliens entirely. My condolences." Shen said sadly, watching as tears welled up in the girls eye and she grabbed her cloak to cover her face, sobbing into it quietly.

"I can give you some good news though little one!" Vahlen said with glee, drawing Ruby's face out of her cloak long enough to smile at her. "I can at least prove that, despite the astronomical chances, you are definitely based off a human." And watched as the girl re-buried her face in the cloak, whilst Shen turned to glare at her. "What?" She said, raising her hands in defence.

"Why would you give her hope like that?!" Shen growled. "The way you said it sounded like you had some grand plan for her, at this point she probably doesn't give a damn about appearing to be like us." He said, watching the girl as she peered up from her cloak at them, still sat atop her cot.

"N-no, it's fine, sh-she just wa-anted to he-h-help me." Ruby said slowly, hiccuping all the way.

"Well, how about some introductions, since I'm afraid you're going to be our guest for a while it seems. I'm Central Officer Bradford, many of our operatives call me Central. That over there-" He gestured over his shoulder, "-Is Chief Science Officer Vahlen, the one responsible for figuring out how to kill those freaks up above, and in front of me is Chief Engineer Shen, the man behind our tech, or as the operatives put it, the creator of cool stuff." Vahlen was too busy to say much, instead opting for a nod while she continued typing away at her scroll, whereas Shen kept his smile on his face, waving at her when he was introduced, to which Ruby responded in kind, raising her arm and waving, then noticing the bandage on her arm.

"Oh, that'd be my doing." Vahlen said when Shen elbowed her and nodded towards Ruby, who was inspecting the bandage on her arm. "Unfortunately I had to take a sample from you to make absolutely sure you were at least close to being human, and I may have been a bit over-zealous with my tissue extraction. My apologies, but you must understand that working on alien specimens may have...dulled my inhibitions a little, as Raymond here seems fit to remind me every 5 minutes."

"Over-zealous? Doctor, with all due respect, you were planning to take a lot more than that!" He said, gesturing towards Ruby's arm while she picked at the bandage. He watched as she looked closely at the bandage, and her hand flew to her eye when she moved her arm to the left, reminding herself once again about her closed eye. "Oh, that. I'm afraid that when you arrived, you landed amongst the ruins of where the device that brought you here was inhabiting, and there were a few...jagged edges. You weren't critically wounded, but I'm afraid your eye was gone." Shen said slowly.

"G-gone? Oh." Ruby said, pulling her knees up to her chest and re-wrapping herself in her cloak, watching them with her one good eye. "Any m-more nugg-gets of tr-ruth for me?" And cracking a very small smile at them with her little joke.

* * *

"No, absolutely not." Central said, shaking his head at Shen.

"Central, you have kept her in there for too long. Please, just let me take her to my workshop. I'll be with her the whole time, and Vahlen already confirmed that for all intents and purposes she's a normal 15-year-old girl. Trapping her in there like that...it's not what we should be doing."

The time between Ruby's arrival in the XCOM Headquarters and now was filled with confusion, as the girl was continually prodded and questioned from every angle, most of their focus being on her 'Faunus' traits, as the girl put it, with her only respite from the constant questioning being Shen's discussions with her about anything from her home, to his family, to their shared love of engineering, an avenue the pair both pursued wholeheartedly, though Ruby was of course far more hands on with the stuff she made, whereas Shen had to make it reliable in other peoples hands instead of his own, a feat Ruby admired as making a weapon that other people could use was special in itself.

"Shen, I understand that. But the question still remains about why exactly she was brought here. And until I know why, I'm not letting her leave that chamber."

"Look, Bradford, you already know the answer to that was dumb luck. It could have happened to anybody. Hell, Lily could be the one currently in that damnable chamber!" Shen said, raising his voice for a rare moment, though calming himself down again at Centrals glare. "Just, please, give her this chance. If she tries anything you don't like, I'll concede the point, but I have faith in her. Besides, with some of the ideas she's given me, I think the people out there fighting would appreciate some of the breakthroughs her perspective would give me."

Looking into his friend and colleagues face, Central stared long and hard, sighing when he saw just how strongly Shen thought of this whole thing. "One chance. She gets one chance at this. She messes up, and she's staying in that chamber until this entire damn thing is dealt with, one way or the other."

Shen had to hold himself back from embracing the man in front of him with a hug, simply settling for a firm and vigorous handshake. "You won't regret this Central."

"I hope not."

* * *

The hissing sound that accompanied company sounded out in Ruby's small little world, and she turned from her position on her cot, her face blank until she saw the figure on the other side, breaking into a smile at the sight of the Engineer, and she waved at him.

"Heya Shen!" And, try as he might, Shen couldn't keep the excited grin off his face as he strode into Ruby's chamber.

"Hi there Ruby. Now, Central doesn't like this, but I don't really care, so I'm warning you now. He's expecting this to go perfectly, which means no accidental explosions, no misfires, nothing to give him anything to use to justify keeping you in here, alright?"

Ruby could only slowly nod, her mind racing about what Shen had planned. "So, uh, what's he expecting to go perfectly?"

"Well, that, my dear, is a surprise. I'm sure this chamber is stifling you by now, so, shall we be off?" And had to ward Ruby off as she attempted to tackle him with a hug.

"REALLY?!" She squealed, her face looking like it'd snap in two with how wide her smile was. "I...THANK YOU SHEN!" She yelled, slipping past his guard to wrap her arms around the older man, who simply resigned himself to patting her back, watching as the ears atop her head twitched one way and the other in excitement, and he had to bite back the temptation to pet them.

"That's fine. Now, we shouldn't take too long, or Central will likely get a bit uppity at us. Follow closely, and...don't be too excitable towards the operatives, some of them will probably be a bit jumpy at seeing you just walking through the Anthill."

Nodding along, Ruby fell into step next to Shen, hands swinging freely as Ruby enjoyed simply being able to walk more than a few steps at a time without having to turn. Granted, the short corridors of the Anthill weren't conducive to straight and long walks, but it was better than the confinement of the cell they had her in. And, with each step Ruby took, she swivelled her head around to look at her surroundings. Talking with Shen about the place was nice, but seeing this all in person was awesome, more awesome than anything she'd seen at home. Though it might just be because the only thing she'd seen for however long she'd been kept confined was featureless one-way glass.

Closing her eyes, Ruby took a deep breath through her nose, marvelling at the dozens of smells permeating the air, reminding herself of the first time she truly leaned upon only her sense of smell for guidance. A hint of roast beef here, a strong smell of sweat over there, Ruby revelled in being able to smell more than just the people who entered the container she was kept in, though she noted that she could also smell incredibly strong scents that she couldn't discern.

Rounding a few corners, Ruby noted how many people were actually in the base, and a surprising few of them actually noticed her, seemingly too busy with their tasks to care that she was even there, though maybe the fact she was walking beside one of their big-wigs was the reason. She'd had a good laugh with Shen when they talked about how he came across the title 'creator of cool stuff', and apparently being known for that was enough to make him the most valuable person in the Anthill, aside from the elusive Commander, someone Ruby was repeatedly assured both knew of her presence, and she would likely never see. If she did, she'd probably either be dead soon after or they'd won the war. The only people in the base who actually knew what the Commander looked like was Shen, Vahlen and Bradford, so for all she knew that grunt eating a sandwich could be the Commander, or the woman walking down that hallway with a datapad. Safety in obscurity was definitely seeming logical to her.

Turning the last corner, Shen quickened his step, throwing open the door to the most beautiful sight in the world, a wide flourish in his arms and a smile on his face.

"Welcome to my workshop! I'd have loved to take you into the foundry proper, but Bradford was snippy enough about even letting you leave that chamber, let alone coming to my workshop. So, we'll just have to make do."

Most of what Shen said was disregarded by Ruby, who was jumping from workbench to workbench with a gleam in her eye, cataloguing everything she knew about and things to ask Shen about. Taking a deep breath in, Ruby frowned at the smell of...fireworks? Taking a few more sniffs, Ruby followed her nose towards one of the workbenches, completely missing the careful look Shen fixed her with. Sniffing closer, Ruby crouched down next to one of the sets of drawers and stopping short when she came across an odd-looking sniper rifle tucked away, with several rounds sat next to it. Ruby immediately put distance between herself and the drawer, throwing a wary glance at Shen, who had a bright smile on his face.

"Bradford would kill me if he knew I left that there." He said with a wink towards Ruby's dumbfounded face.

"You're joking? You-...WHAT? You...I...I don't even." Ruby floundered, settling for simply stepping forwards towards the drawer slowly, making sure Shen could warn her if he didn't want her to, arriving at the drawer and slowly picking up the weapon, pulling the bolt back and breathing a sigh of relief when she saw it was unloaded. "So, you got a firing range I can shoot this thing at?" Ruby said with a smirk, lifting the rifle to her shoulder with one hand and putting her other hand to her hip. A smirk that Shen matched with a smile, and he gestured towards a door off to the side of his workshop.

"Hold on Ruby. Hand me that rifle. While I trust you, it'd be a bit too risky to just hand you a working rifle like that. The trigger wouldn't actually work if you loaded a round in and pulled it now."

Nodding, Ruby scooped up the rounds for her new toy, putting them in her pouch and walking towards the firing range, handing the rifle to Shen as she passed, though to call the room she entered just a firing range was a dis-service. Holographic depictions of aliens met her, and Ruby noted that many of them were similar to what Shen had described to her when prompted. She recognized the frail and tiny bodies of the Sectoids, and equally frail but lanky Thin Men, and the opposite end of the spectrum with the hulking mass of a Muton being dwarfed by what could only be a Sectopod.

Suddenly, even after hearing the stories of the aliens attacking this world, Ruby felt a pang of fear at the sheer sight of those aliens, particularly the Chryssalid. Shen had told her stories about how Chryssalids reproduced on the battlefield, forcibly implanting embryos in dying hosts and how, after a short period, their young would burst from the corpse. If she didn't already have trouble sleeping, she had no doubts that the Chryssalids would give her something to be scared of.

After Shen walked in behind her fiddling with the rifle and handing to her, Ruby turned her attention to sighting in the old weapon, wishing for yet another time that she'd brought Crescent Rose with her, though knowing XCOM it'd have been taken apart to be analyzed. With some prompting from Shen she managed to zero the scope to a decent range and sent the Muton projection downrange, sighting in and steadying her aim on her target.

All the while, Shen observed the crimsonette carefully, watching her steady her breathing and holding the weapon steady atop her hands, rather than the more favored method used by snipers to lay the weapon upon their elbow, whilst her eye focused on her scope and winced when she attempted to open her other eye, signs of a decent sniper if he'd ever seen one. She had occasionally talked with him about her own weapon, Crescent Rose, but when pressed only said it was a sniper rifle that she'd made. And while Shen couldn't see hint of a lie on her face, he knew she was covering something up, though seemingly out of embarrassment or fear rather than malice.

Seemingly comfortable with the weapon, Ruby looked around for a moment before frowning, and Shen had to again follow her gaze to see the earmuffs hanging from the wall, laying her weapon down gently and walking over with the frown still on her lips.

Grabbing one of the pairs, Ruby fiddled with it for a moment before turning to Shen. "Uhh, do you mind if I take this apart real quick? I kinda need to protect these." Ruby sheepishly asked, wiggling her fur-tipped ears at Shen, who merely waved her back into his workshop. After a few moments, to which Shen was sure he heard at least a few curses that he couldn't quite get the meaning of, Ruby zipped back into the room, her now thoroughly deformed headphones snugly protecting her sensitive ears. "Ta-da." She announced proudly, grabbing two more pairs of headphones and throwing one to Shen, slipping the other over her normal ears and grabbing her rifle again, shouldering it with a sigh and placing her eye behind the scope once again.

After a brief few moments of preparing herself, Ruby aimed, released her breath, and fired, marvelling at the kickback this tiny weapon had, though she mentally slapped herself as her talks with Shen had told her about how they didn't have dust on this world, instead doing everything with gunpowder. Rubbing her shoulder from the kick she hadn't been expecting, Ruby opened the bolt first, then looked back down the scope, smirking to herself when she saw the neat little black mark the bullet had left on the forehead of the Muton, and devolving into laughter when she pulled her vision from the scope and saw Shen's face frozen in surprise.

The weapon Ruby held in her hands was a junker, it was something that one of the XCOM operatives had brought from home, and relinquished to Shen when he made a request for a normal but battered weapon which wouldn't be missed if it was lost. Yet Ruby had fired it as if it were just fine, only needing a little help to zero the scope, and she'd shot a Muton through the head at a distance which would make most XCOM snipers cry at. Indeed, at those distances the snipers would resort to using radio callouts to adjust their fire, nicknaming the tactic squad-sight.

And Ruby, for her first time holding the weapon, had made the shot as if she were shooting a pistol at a few meters, without the aid of a S.C.O.P.E, nor any assistance from a spotter, instead relying on her own skill. To say he was gobsmacked was an understatement.

"So Shen, how many can I fire?" Ruby asked, picking another round out of her pouch and rolling it across her fingers and smiling at him, joyful to finally get a chance to shoot again. Ruby had taken Crescent Rose out many a time to simply shoot trees, Grimm, and occasionally just the ground itself, and nothing beat the feeling of the weapon in her hands pulling against her and sending pure death downrange at her target. Though she didn't understand his surprise, maybe snipers here didn't have rifled barrels or something? After checking the chamber carefully then looking into the barrel through the receiver revealed that the weapon she held was definitely had a rifled barrel, just adding to her confusion.

"As many as you can get ahold of Ruby. I need to speak with Central quickly, but you can stay in here and practice with that rifle if you'd like. Just promise you won't leave the range until I come back, alright?" Shen said, striding out of the room with a quick wave when Ruby nodded and slipped the bullet between her fingers smoothly into her weapon, and the sound of rapid gunfire sounded through the open door before he could even close it.

As soon as the door was closed Shen already had his communicator in hand, and opened a direct line to Central, who had assured him that if anything went wrong that he could immediately contact him and that, barring an urgent mission, he would be available.

The instant the line connected Shen began speaking. "Bradford, firstly, no, there isn't something wrong, though you may not like some of what I have to say."

Hearing a sigh from the other end, the Engineer took that as his cue to begin relaying the story to Bradford of how he had tested Ruby to see what she'd do if he accidentally left a weapon around his workshop, though immediately assuring Bradford that the weapon was ineffective, and wouldn't have fired anyway. He went on to explain how he had then shown her his range and let her have at it, after being assured based on her reaction to the weapon that she harboured absolutely no ill will towards him, though that much was obvious with their interactions.

Then he arrived at explaining Ruby's accuracy, and quite clearly heard the sound of liquid being spat out, snickering to himself as Bradford simply let out a loud "WHAT?!" when he told him just how far Ruby had shot.

What Shen didn't like though was how Bradford immediately said something about coming to see that for himself, closing the line and leaving Shen slightly regretting telling him so quickly. Perhaps letting Ruby go back to the cell first would have been better, lest she be subjected to being tested for sniper training and sent out to go and fight those aliens. He'd seen her reactions to the holograms he had for targets, and while he was surprised by the lack of fear in her eyes, he could still see the revulsion when she looked at the Chryssalid, which just told him that if she saw one of those in the field, she might freeze, which is not what XCOM would need in an operation.

Ruby had told him before about how she was a huntress, she was trained to kill creatures called Grimm, though she seemed wary to elaborate on them, only telling him the very basics. So, perhaps her past experience would let her push through her fear and revulsion, but that wasn't a chance that Shen wanted her to even have to take.

Breaking his thoughts, the door to his workshop hissed open and Central strode in, eyeing the door to his shooting range warily for a few moments before turning to Shen.

"You know, you're just as bad as Vahlen sometimes when it comes to safety protocols."

Shen could only shrug at that, knowing already that Central wouldn't appreciate that he gave Ruby a loaded weapon and told her to have fun at a shooting range. Gesturing with a hand at his range, he stepped forward to open the door, and let Central step into the range, the loud report of a rifle being fired sounding through his workshop once again, before Shen stepped through himself and closed the door behind him again, turning around to see Central staring at Ruby while she fired from a seated position, her knees up and her left arm wrapped around the weapon like a typical XCOM sniper, resting the barrel between her knees for stability.

He then turned his attention to the little screen denoting range statistics, and Shen watched as Central's jaw fell at the distances Ruby was firing at, something no XCOM sniper ever shot at. And those snipers had months with their weapons, plus enhancements like S.C.O.P.E modifications and genetic modifications. And the rifles they were firing were far more advanced than the, quite frankly, trash rifle that their guest was using to put rounds downrange.

What truly amused Shen was the way Ruby was firing. Rather than using the magazine on the weapon, Ruby had instead attached the pouch she'd placed her bullets into onto the side of her weapon, and loaded a fresh round in after each shot, slamming home the bolt and firing, then pulling toe bolt back again and loading a new bullet in. While unorthodox, Shen could certainly appreciate the shocking consistent rate of fire she was achieving with the weapon.

Finally noticing her guests, Ruby fired the round she'd chambered, opening the bolt and laying the weapon down carefully on the range table in front of her, before spinning to give Shen the biggest smile possible, visibly restraining herself from leaping at him with another hug, though they all knew that was probably just because Central was in the room and wouldn't appreciate it.

"Heya Shen, Hi Central. D-did I do something wrong?" Ruby asked, lip quivering as she looked at Central fearfully, though she brightened up when he shook his head.

"While I don't appreciate Shen disregarding my warnings and handing you a rifle, I can safely say I appreciate the results. I have to ask just how you can shoot that far?" Central said, eyebrows raising when Ruby just shrugged.

"I don't know, that's as far as I normally shoot, why? Shen also looked confused so I don't get it, that's a pretty typical range to fire at for me."

Both Shen and Central looked at Ruby with wide eyes, until Central rubbed his eyes and muttered something about embarrassment. "Ruby, our snipers typically shoot targets unassisted at this range." He said, pointing to one of the far closer targets. Then, gesturing towards a target about double the distance. "And that target is where the maximum range is for using a method of coordination the guys named squadsight, where they use one of the other soldiers to call out their targets for engagement. The distance you're firing at is far beyond that..."

"Well I don't know, like I said it's how far I normally fire." She admitted with a shrug, rubbing her arms together behind herself and wincing.

Straightening his back, Central stepped forward, eyeing Ruby closely. "Look, Ruby, we may have gotten off on the wrong foot, so I have no right to ask this, but would you perhaps consider working with us as a sniper?" Though he was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder.

"Central, while I appreciate Ruby's skills, I think she'd be far more valuable in the foundry. Some of the tech she's helped me come up with has been groundbreaking, and surely having better weapons is greater overall than having one much better sniper?" Shen said, gesturing towards Ruby who was torn between the two ideas.

"Hold on, how about I do both?" Ruby asked, drawing both men to stare at her incredulously. "If you ever have a massive need for a long-range sniper, you can get me to go, but only occasionally, and the rest of the time I'll stay down in the foundry. I still want to see those SHIVs you keep yammering on about Shen!" Ruby said, levelling a glare at Shen who raised his hands in defence. "Though all we need now is for me to be awesome at research and we could have all 3 of you wanting me in your area!" She said with a smirk.

"Hey, if Central agrees to it you can have the full run of the mill!" Shen said quickly, making Ruby throw caution to the wind and dart forwards to hug him for the second time that day, and he rubbed her hair playfully, earning a pout from him and a disbelieving look from Central.

"If I didn't know any better I'd say that's a clone of Lily, just mixed with the DNA of a wolf." Central remarked off-handedly, though he straightened up at the glare Shen levelled on him. "Anyway, that sounds alright to me. I'll be frank Ruby, I still don't fully trust you, but we need as many able bodies as we can throw at this war, and letting someone with your skills just sit in the base doesn't seem to be the best idea. Plus, with the amount Shen has been pushing for it, I imagine we'd have a full-scale riot on our hands if he let slip that some of the cool stuff was thought up by someone we currently have in a holding cell." Bradford said with a smirk, taking a step back when Ruby made to hug him as well, though she caught herself and simply settled for a big smile and a nod, her ears twitching about happily.

"Thanks Bradford!" Ruby chirped, her smile growing as he visibly showed his discomfort at hearing his name from such a high-pitched source.

"You're...welcome.

* * *

**So, Ruby is an excellent sniper. I mean, considering the stupid distances XCOM 'snipers' shoot at, anyone with two brain cells to rub together could fire further.**

**But, her main purpose is in the foundry with Shen, making cool tech and getting into awkward situations. I have a few ideas rattling around in my head that are begging to be released, but this felt like a good place to cap the story off. **

**EDITED - 24/08/19 - Ruby is now a Faunus.**

**Why? Because I damn well wanted her to be one! Wolf-ears are cute, dammit, I dare you to argue with me on that! Go on, I promise that your arguments will never succeed in the face of Wolf-Ruby with red-tipped and fluffy wolf ears on top of her head!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Cheers for the response to the first chapter! This is quite fun to write if I'm honest, I like the idea of Ruby being a sniper and engineer, working on weapons for XCOM and doing some actual SNIPING! Granted, Ruby is only shooting on a weapon range, but still.**

**Also. Seriously. 95% chance to hit and they MISSED! Now half the team is dead. That's how 90% of XCOM Playthroughs end my friends!**

**_Chapter 2_**

* * *

XCOM Sharpshooters were a proud sort. They never failed to rub it into the faces of their friends and comrades about how many of them couldn't hit a muton at more than 20 paces, whereas the Sharpshooters could do triple the distance just using radio callouts from said team-mates.

So, it wasn't surprising that the bases sniper population collectively erupted when they heard that a 15-year-old wolf-girl had taken an old, beat up junker of a rifle, far from the top-of-the-line tech those sharpshooters used, and out-ranged the longest shots they'd even done by an astronomical margin. Unfortunately for Ruby, this meant many of them began pestering her whenever she was seen in the base with questions and comments, several even going so far as to demand she demonstrate her sniping abilities, baffling all who watched, including Ruby, as to them, the distance she shot at was mind-blowing, whereas Ruby considered it a casual range to shoot at, thus confusing both parties.

She had yet to go on an actual mission, as Central wanted her first mission to be something relatively safe yet still an environment where her battlefield abilities could be showcased. The one time such a mission had come up, Ruby was a little unobtainable, having almost blown her own arm off when messing about with some Elerium.

It wasn't fun waking up on an infirmary bed, both pairs of her ears still ringing, with a throbbing pain all across her side where the Elerium tried to cauterize her. Fortunately for the girl, it was at that moment that her aura decided to make a surprise appearance, flaring up in response to said Elerium explosion and protecting her from losing the arm, turning a mutilating wound into a simple burn would, though her aura saw fit to immediately vanish again when the threat had passed, leaving Ruby to deal with the aftermath, both in pain, and in questioning.

Explaining that little 'episode' to Vahlen was like trying to talk her way out of the mouth of a King Taijitu, though Central finally brought the hammer down and refusing to give the woman permission to attempt some more radical experimentation after she made a request to fire a laser at Ruby's arm, citing that she'd be more valuable with both arms operational.

Ruby was still rather in limbo about her thoughts on the loss of her left eye, and she occasionally could be seen with a hand to her missing eye, crying quietly in secluded corners where very few would notice her. But, for the ones that did notice, the only thing they could do was tell Shen and hope he came up with something to help the girl. It helped that the girl was quickly becoming something of a mascot for the entire base, a pretty perfect cross between adorable and deadly. Ruby more often than not had to bat away people who wanted to touch her ears and pester her for pictures, though she never missed the stares at her closed eye.

And of course, what kind of Chief Engineer could ignore such a problem?

* * *

"Ruby?"

Shen entered the room Ruby dubbed as her workshop, the tell-tale signs of Ruby working away at some project audible even through the door, and said sounds stopping when the door closed again. Swivelling on her seat, Ruby's eye lit up at Shen, and she bounded out of her seat to give the man a jaunty wave, ripping off the earmuffs from atop her head in a smooth motion and tossing them onto her bench.

"Heya Shen, what's up? Did something break again?" Ruby asked, wincing at the memory of being elected, by the rule of being the smallest engineer, to clamber inside the smallest chambers of a machine to fix some internal damage, and hoping it wasn't so, smiling when he shook his head.

"No Ruby, I...well, I asked some of the other engineers to help with this, but most of it is from me and Vahlen. I think she was hoping to use it to bribe you into her laboratory for more questioning and tests, but oh well, better to ask forgiveness than permission." Shen said, pulling his hand out from behind his back to reveal a small black metal box.

Handing it to Ruby, he watched the crimson-haired girl look closely at it, and back up to him sceptically. "Sheeen...Is this what I think it is?" Ruby said, pointedly not opening the box. Thinking for a moment, Shen simply nodded, deciding she'd probably come to the right conclusion, and stepping backwards to support himself when the girl threw herself at him with another hug. "YES! Thank you Shen. Oh, think of all the babies we'll make together!" Ruby yelled, much to Shen's surprise.

"RUBY! No then, that's not what you thou-" He said, stopping when he noticed the smirk on Ruby's face, rubbing his eyes with a sigh. "I swear Ruby, you're going to be the death of me."

"Ehh, if the Elerium doesn't kill me first, that is." Ruby said with a shrug, finally opening the box to reveal a white orb. Gingerly lifting it, Ruby turned it around to see a replica of the silver visible on her right eye, and Ruby had to stop herself from dropping the little ball in surprise, her ears twitching heavily in agitation. "S-Shen, that's a joke, right?" Ruby said, looking up at Shen who was still smiling, and watching him shake his head.

"Nope. I did the mechanics, and Vahlen added her own little adjustments, mostly the bio-mechanical responses. All you have to do is, to put it crudely, stick that into your eye, the right way around, of course, and it'll automatically connect itself. Plus, it isn't just an eye. Go ahead and give it a shot." Shen said, still smiling as Ruby looked at the eye closely.

"Shen...t-this is...I.." Ruby started, for the first time in the base at a complete loss for anything to actually say, eventually settling for a simple, "Thank you." Walking slowly back to Shen, she gave him a proper and slower hug, far from the usual leap-attack style hugs she gave out, one that Shen returned happily, smirking at the gentle twitching her ears settled into.

Returning her attention to the little box, Ruby picked the eye back up, looking once more into the same silver she saw in the mirror, before spinning it around and leaning her head back, opening her eyelids with her fingers, and mentally thanking Vahlen for removing her stitches, slowly sliding the eye into place, shuddering at the feeling of a foreign object being in her head like that. The instant the eye was settled in, Ruby almost fell over as a flood of sensations rushed across her face, only being held up by Shen, though it settled just as fast as it came, and her vision became blurry, as her body tried to re-adjust to having two viewpoints again.

After a few moments, the blur started fading out, and Ruby marvelled at having depth perception again. After living in the base with only a single eye for such a long time, being able to see normally again was like not realizing she hadn't been able to breathe properly the entire time. Interrupting her though, Shen poked Ruby in the shoulder, watching her take a last look around before focusing on him, marvelling at how...whole she looked with both eyes gazing back at him mistily.

"You know, it's not just an eye Ruby. Vahlen is actually the one to thank for realizing it, but she decided that, instead of just giving you normal vision, we could add a few...extras. Unfortunately, since we have no basis to go off, we can't make it respond to mental commands or anything like that, but we came up with the next best thing." Shen then raised his sleeve, revealing a small, almost bracelet-like object on his arm, which he slid off and handed to Ruby. "On that little bracelet are buttons to change your vision. Of course, since it only has an effect on one eye, might be a good idea to close your other eye when you aren't using normal sight, since super-imposing the two different images would probably cause a bit of a headache. Then again, since your brain already separates the audio between your two different ears, you might have an easier time of it."

Watching Ruby slip the bracelet on, Shen stepped in close, pointing out buttons to the girl. "That one is for thermal, that's a zoom, and that one is night vision. Now, this last one is going to be disorienting for you, but bear with it." Shen then reached over and pressed the last button, and Ruby watched as text appeared in front of her vision. "This one gives you a heads-up display. You can use it to display a couple of things like a clock, a map, stuff like that, though you'll need to have it updated with that kind of information if it changes, but we can handle all that later. The last trick is the best one." Handing Ruby her rifle, she watched as text attached itself to the weapon, telling her how many rounds were loaded into the weapon.

Reaching into one of the pockets of his jacket, Shen revealed several black bands, which looked honestly like hairbands or something to Ruby. When she looked to the engineer for an explanation, he smiled. "These are, to put it bluntly, trackers." Slipping on onto his arm and fiddling it for a moment, Ruby winced when suddenly her vision changed and she could see him, or rather an icon above his arm. "Your new eye can keep track of the location of these trackers, and it'll even let you see them through walls and floors. Pretty handy for a sniper, huh? If you used a decent rifle, I'm sure you'll find all kinds of uses for it. Knowing you, you'll probably end up using them to triangulate blind shots, huh?"

Smirking, Ruby closed her real eye, letting her vision be supplied by her entirely fake eye, and marvelling at the sheer absurdity of what she was looking at. It reminded her of home, how Velvet was playing around with hard-light constructs, and what she could see was remarkably similar, though of course when she stuck her hand through the floating text that was displayed above the rifle, her fingers just slipped through it like it wasn't there...because it wasn't. The thought of seeing something body else could gave Ruby a bit of a headache.

Wrapping her head around the fact that she was looking at something that her eye was forcing her to was strange, but Ruby got over it quickly, glancing around the room with a gleam in her eye. "So, how does it update? I'm guessing you had to manually input this rifle so it knew how many bullets it carried and how many are loaded into a magazine right? Or does it automatically count based on the size of the bullets and the magazine and made an educated guess?" Ruby roted off her questions in rapid fire, busily hopping around the room snatching up items and looking closely at them, each time surprised when her eye tried to provide any useful information it could find.

"Sort of. Ruby slow down please." Shen said, sticking a hand out to stop the girl from darting around like an errant storm. "Right now, your eye uses the internet to try to provide the best guess it can, though it's not perfect...look, the eye is complicated, alright? And one of a kind. If we could make one for every soldier who lost an eye we would, but it's a one-time item, do you understand? Central gave us permission to make it for you, but we can't do it again."

"But...why would you give it to me?" Ruby asked innocently, her ears tilting to the side and adding to her already emotive face.

"Ruby, I don't know if you've properly realized this yet, but the Commander wants...no, needs you in top fighting condition. If you had only one eye, you'd be fighting worse than normal, right? And considering how far above our own top snipers are, I'm sure every percent better you are counts for more than you could know, at least compared to our own." Shen said with an easy smile. "And hey, don't get all sappy on me again. You know, the better you do out there, the more likely it is that you'll find another Hyperwave Relay and get to go home. Hopefully this time we'll be able to keep the damn thing stabilized and open the portal permanently."

Smirking, Ruby turned her attention back to the rifle in her hands, cocking her head and pulling the bolt back. "Well, probably should do it with something a bit stronger than this old girl huh?" Hefting the rifle in her hands, Ruby ran her hand down the stock, across the receiver and up the barrel, before gently setting the rifle down on a table. "Not to say she's a bad gun, but against some of the stuff you've told me about, it'd be like throwing pebbles, huh?"

Laughing, Shen stepped towards the door, waving a hand for Ruby to join him. "Let's go get you some kit. What were you working on anyway?" Shen asked, gesturing towards the seemingly random components scattered across her workbench.

Smirking, Ruby just waved her hand in front of her face. "Secret."

* * *

Rolling her shoulders again, Ruby winced at the weight her new armor piled onto her. Despite her protestations that since her aura had protected her from that Elerium explosion surely it'd do the same if she got shot at, Central was adamant that she wear something protective, though when Shen told her that since their heavy-hitters were all using the Carapace armor and she'd have to make do with standard body armor, Ruby was rather adamant that she have the lightest possible armor, a sentiment Shen fortunately shared, though it took some arguing.

Her aggravation at the armor was off-set by the permission that Central gave that she could finally enter the armory and pick out a weapon to use. Immediately bee-lining for the sniper rifles, Ruby felt her cape get snagged on something, and she was almost dragged over by a hulk of a man, easily more than a full half her height taller than her, who swatted her hand when she reached out again for the weapon she was about to grab.

"Don't touch my gun." The man barked out, though Ruby was too surprised that this giant was a sniper to care.

"Wait, your gun? But Shen said I could pick anything in here! SHEN!" Ruby yelled, watching the engineer finish his brief conversation with the quartermaster and look between her and her assailant with a sheepish smile.

"I think I can guess what happened here. When I said any gun, I should have specified, any of the guns which have tags attached to them are personal weapons that have been modded and are only used by a single person. Now, Ruby, may I introduce you to Strike One's sniper, Major Casey 'Nixer' Jenkins. And Jenkins, as you could probably put together, you are holding onto the cape of Deputy Head Engineer and Sniper, Corporal Ruby Rose, who Central has just authorized to and I quote Ruby in saying this 'Play with the fun toys.' And, just because she hasn't got a nickname yet, that hasn't stopped a bunch of the guys from calling her 'Red'."

"Wait, this short-stack is the sniper everybody's been talking about?" Casey said, letting go of Ruby's cape and crouching down to her level, ignoring the glare she was levelling him. "But you said she only had one eye?" He said. "Then again, shouldn'ta missed these." He gestured at the ears atop Ruby's head, ghosting his hand over them and smirking when they twitched about.

"She does. One of them is a fake one." Shen said, ignoring Ruby's pout to snag a rifle off of one of the nearby weapon racks. "Now, Ruby, this is a-" Shen began, though was interrupted when Ruby all but knocked him over in her haste to grab the weapon.

"WAIT DON'T TELL ME!" She yelled at him, running her hands over the weapon lovingly, unfolding the bipod, twisting the dials on the scope and inspecting every inch closely, her ears twitching about like mad, and Shen smirked at the thought that, if she had a tail it'd be swinging about like a bat. "This actually looks kind of similar to Neptune's rifle...but there's no actual matter in the chamber. It's a laser rifle isn't it?" Ruby said, raising her view from the weapon to look at Shen, who just had a smile on his face as he nodded.

"You know, if you want we can get you two a room." Casey cut in, gesturing between Ruby and the rifle she was still caressing.

"Oh I wouldn't want to do that. While I'm confident I could take her apart, I'd probably never be able to put her back together again. No, I'll do that later." She said, all but purring at the weapon she was cradling in her arms.

"Well, Ruby, I'm glad to see you appreciate a good weapon!" The giant of a man bellowed. "Now, I've heard your shooting distances, and I can't say I believe it. What say you and I head over to the shooting range and you can get a few hundred shots off with that beauty, better than the junker you were apparently using in any case." Casey said, gesturing towards a door and smiling when Ruby nodded enthusiastically.

Snagging a few charge packs off a nearby shelf, Casey grabbed his own rifle, slinging it over his shoulder and smirking at the look of adoration Ruby gave the weapon, one of the few prototype Plasma Sniper Rifles Shen had put together, before striding towards the gun range, Ruby following close behind, talking animatedly with Shen about the weapons they were carrying. And if the smile on his face was any indication, Shen was loving every moment that Ruby praised his work.

"By the way Shen, why didn't you tell me they came up with a nickname? You know I hate being called Red!" Ruby yelled, catching Casey off-guard and almost making him drop one of his charge packs.

"Wait, you're kidding? You have a red cloak, red-tipped hair and wolf ears, red clothing, and now you have a bunch of red armor...and you hate being called Red?" Casey said, putting his hands on his knees to recover from the bellowing laugh he let out when Ruby just nodded. "What next, don't call me Silver? Or Wolf?" He said, pointing at her eyes and ears.

"Hey shut up! If you guys were the first to call me it, I would have probably loved it, but every time I ran into a stupidly dressed criminal he called me Red, and I hate being reminded of him, okay?" Ruby pouted, folding her arms across her chest and turning away from him. "Though Wolf doesn't sound that bad..." She tilted her head to the side, contemplating it.

"Fine, fine, you win, still gotta come up with a good nickname for you. I mean, Silver sounds good to me, but it's up to the commander honestly, they change nicknames on the fly to suit their needs. They're usually cool letting you pick your own one, but for a few of the higher-ranks, they've received notifications that they have new nicknames, and nobody has disputed it. I mean, my own nickname kind of means Ender or Canceller, which is cool, but I hear some of the guys don't like there's."

Stepping into the gun range, Casey laid his weapon down on the table, arraying his energy packs to the side and stepping to the next bay, waving Ruby over, taking the weapon from her hands and laying it down similarly. "Now, I'm sure you know enough about gun safety to not be an idiot, right?" Watching Ruby closely when she nodded, Casey pointed at the weapon. "Well, what are some do's and don'ts around weapons?" he said, crossing his arms when Ruby frowned at him.

"What, don't you trust me? Whatever. Uhh, don't look down the barrel, finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot, don't point it at anything you don't want to put a hole into, always treat the weapon like it's loaded, don't shoot inebriated, and don't let, no I'm not saying your words, 'meanies' touch your gun. That good enough for you?" Ruby said with a smirk, pointedly leering towards Casey's weapon at her last point.

"Yeah, I figured, just wanted to be sure, no need to get snippy. I'd hate to have to explain why you shot yourself by accident. Now, let's do a little competition. I'll send my target downrange and shoot it, you match the distance. We'll keep going until one of us misses the target three times consecutively. Sound fair? Good." He ended, stepping out of Ruby's bay and into his own, loading his rifle and punching in a decent distance for the target, sending the plate down-range and watching Ruby's follow it.

"Hang on a sec. Can I do a few practice shots? I've never fired this thing before so I want to figure out the zeroing for the scope!" Ruby yelled, her head leaning around the wall separating the two firing positions.

When Casey just nodded at her, he watched as she moved to the next booth along, sending the target half the distance out and firing a single shot, immediately yelping in a bizarrely high pitch. Looking at her, Casey frowned when he saw Ruby clutching her ears. Before he could do anything though, she'd rubbed them lightly and reached into one of her pouches, drawing out some practically broken earmuffs and slipping them onto her ears, drawing Casey to raise an eyebrow and cough, getting her attention, and he gestured at the top of his head.

A few moments went by before Ruby realized what he was asking, and she cringed. "The laser made a really nasty high-frequency sound, but only my primary ears picked it up, my normal hearing heard what I guess you guys hear, so I need to protect one set but not the other, should have thought of that, to be honest." She said with a shrug, turning back to her target and firing a few shots off, each time adjusting her scope. Nodding to herself, the wolf sniper re-entered her own booth and chirped "Okay, ready!" to Casey, who just shook his head.

Rolling his shoulders, Casey hefted his weapon, folding his left arm under the barrel and resting the gun in the crook of his arm, crouching down and stabilizing himself, crosshairs centered on the ugly face of the Sectoid target. After a few moments of steadying his aim, the sniper fired, the plasma spearing straight through his targets head. A moment later, the red laser from Ruby's booth speared her own target, and she evidently decided for a little flair, firing twice in half a second and putting both rounds into her target's eyes.

Ignoring the polite clapping from Shen and the few other people who came to the range to watch, Casey reached up from his position, sending the target further downrange and watching Ruby's chase it, coming to stop at a very respectable distance.

Adding a little of his own flair, Casey put a shot through both knee-caps of the Sectoid, finishing it with another lance of plasma through the head. Smirking, he turned to watch Ruby through the glass between them as she just blew some hair out of her eyes, shouldering her rifle and standing fully, putting three shots in quick succession in a line across her targets forehead, and winking when she turned to look at the assembled audience the pair had.

Grunting his approval, Casey decided to up the ante, sending the target to just below his record for shooting, watching Ruby again send her target straight out with no hesitation. Lining his rifle up, Casey cursed when the first beam of plasma missed by a centimetre, immediately firing again and watching the plasma streak through the lung of the target.

Turning his head to look at Ruby with a confident smirk, Casey had to stop his jaw from dropping when he saw she was still just standing up, her rifle held as if it was an assault rifle, as she lined up and fired another 3 shots in quick succession, one to each lung and the third between the eyes.

All but punching the buttons, Casey sent his target out beyond his furthest shots, grimacing when Ruby sent her own to the same distance. Lying down, the sniper took notably longer to fire this time, taking several breaths to steady his aim, and firing. The plasma burned through the air, and missed the target by a fair margin. Adjusting, Casey fired again, and again his shot missed his target.

Risking a glance at Ruby, he almost groaned when she was just looking at him with a raised eyebrow, turning quickly back to his scope and lining up his third shot, swearing quietly when it also missed.

Unloading his rifle, Casey settled it down in the table in front of him, taking a breath before looking at Ruby and gesturing at the range. "Can you hit that?" He asked, watching Ruby blink a few times before she let a smirk slip onto her face. Casey could safely say he wasn't expecting the next words from her lips.

"I can do one better than just hit that." She said wryly, stepping over to her distance selector and sending the target much further than Casey's had been.

"You're joking." The sniper said, looking between Ruby and the target in disbelief.

"Nope. This is why Central doesn't want me to just be an Engineer. Not that he's prying me away from that of course." Ruby murmured the last words just barely loud enough to be audible, turning her attention back to the range and raising her rifle. Behind her, the few members of the audience that had already seen her shoot at distances far in excess of the current ranges were rolling their eyes at the open mouths of the others. At the head of this group was Shen, his face caught between pride and worry.

Breathing out slowly, Ruby let her weapon sing, firing shots through each of the target's limbs, then a shot in the center of the chest and between the eyes, rounding it off with a shot to the groin and her last shot between the eyes again. Smiling, Ruby took the energy cell out of her own weapon, laying the rifle down and smiling at the stunned sniper next to her. "Yeah."

That was all she said, as she walked past the gathered personnel and left the armory, looking forward to finding a project to disassemble in the Foundry.

* * *

"Ruby Rose."

The voice interrupted Ruby while she was busily taking apart a scope, making her jump, as she never heard the door to the workshop open, nor the footsteps that approached her, though that may have been because her primary ears were covered by her customized earmuffs. Leaning backwards to look at the person who spoke over her shoulder, Ruby frowned when she didn't recognise her.

"Yeah?" She asked simply, watching the figure as a small smile appeared on her face. "if you want me to demonstrate my sniping skills, go watch the recordings."

"Don't worry, I've already seen the recordings, and between them and everything Shen has said about you, I probably know more about you than you'd expect." She said simply, garnering Ruby's full attention as she put the scope down and turned on her stool, giving the person her full attention.

"O..okay? Then why are you here, and who are you?" Ruby asked, tilting her head, and unconsciously making her ears mimic the action, unknowingly forcing the woman in front of her to suppress a coo at the sight.

"Let's just say I wanted to get your measure personally. It's not every day that XCOM receives a visitor from another world, now is it? And, if you haven't put it together yet, quite frankly I'm disappointed, though Central did remark that your engineering and sniping aptitude outweighed your deduction and planning skills somewhat."

"Wait a minute...Central makes remarks at you, and Shen talks with you...Commander?!" Ruby tried, eyes widening when the woman nodded.

"I trust you'll keep this meeting secret, of course, I'm sure you wouldn't want the extra...'popularity' which would come from saying you've met me, now would you?" The woman said, smiling when Ruby nodded quickly. "Good. Now, as I said, I've already seen your abilities with a rifle, and considering Shen's praises of your abilities in his Foundry, I daresay losing you wouldn't help us much. I do apologize for the rough stay you had during your first weeks here, but as I'm sure you are now well aware, we had to be safe. If the aliens found out where we were based, our fight would become...significantly harder."

"Not that I don't appreciate meeting you, which is cool and all, but why are you even here? Surely you could just ask Shen about whether I was being honest, lord knows he can tell when I'm lying about whether I know what happened to stuff sometimes." At the face the Commander made, Ruby put her hands up in defence. "It's not my fault Elerium's so unstable okay?! I thought I could use it to permanently power scopes so we didn't have to change their power packs, and enhance their magnification, not my fault it melted out of its containment!" Ruby yelled, pouting when the elusive Commander, a figure Ruby had a mental image as someone shrouded in darkness and mystery, burst out laughing, one hand over her mouth.

"I can see you definitely take after Vahlen in that regard. Pushing ahead without due caution. I read the incident reports involving you and Elerium, you're lucky you still have both arms." The Commander said, wiping tears from her eyes and smiling at Ruby. "I needed that, thank you, Corporal. I've spent far too long around straight-laced people, having a laugh like that is nigh-impossible. Of course, I have to do so anonymously, and yes, that is confirming the rumor I'm sure Shen has told you, I do actually walk around the base posing as a 'squaddie' occasionally, it's nice to act as a cog in the machine occasionally."

"I don't envy you, paperwork is scary." Ruby said, shuddering at the thought of a desk covered in papers to read and sign.

"Well, I have to get back to it, no rest for the wicked, and it'd be bad if I weren't around when someone inevitably has something I need to do. I look forwa-"

"ALERT! ALIEN TERROR ATTACK IN PROGRESS! STRIKE-1, CORPORAL RUBY ROSE, ASSEMBLE AT THE SKYRANGER ASAP!"

The loud message blaring out of the intercom interrupted the Commander, who took only a moment to smile towards a stunned Ruby before darting off to wherever she commands from, leaving Ruby to take a moment to shake herself from her stupor before she ditched her tools and ran for the door, mind racing.

Running through the Headquarters, Ruby noted the controlled panic currently going on, as people ran to and fro, preparing supplies or generally doing tasks Ruby couldn't figure out, though all cleared the way for Ruby, allowing her passage to the Skyranger to pass by quickly, and after a few minutes Ruby arrived, noting the heavily armored figures stood in a line.

Running over to them, Ruby waved at Casey, who beckoned her over.

"Looks like this is your trial by fire. I heard it's New York getting hit, so plenty of buildings for us to set up in. Now, go get your kevlar on, I heard Shen has a last-minute gift for you." Casey said, giving her a gentle shove towards one of the nearby armor racks.

Donning the armor quickly, Ruby let her mind wander to the future, and she didn't realize she'd been stood thinking for a good minute before Casey laid his hand on her shoulder, snapping her from her thoughts. "Come on, we're getting the briefing on the Skyranger. Don't forget to grab your rifle." He said, waving his hand at the rifle on the wall and watching Ruby shake her head, bounding over to pick the weapon up and sling it across her back, smiling up at him and jogging over to the Skyranger, her quick pace matched by Casey, who frowned at the idea of sending a 15-year-old to what amounts to a warzone, even if she was going to be shooting from pretty much outside of the danger zone.

Taking his own seat on the Skyranger, Casey looked at each member of his team, noting that they all looked just as apprehensive as he did about Ruby, though he doubted it was for the same reasons. Looking then to Ruby, Casey felt himself smile at the girl, who was far too busy poring over every minor detail of the laser sniper in her hands to notice the glances the rest of the team gave her.

"Ruby!" The voice of Shen called out, the man jogging over with a few small gadgets in his hands.

"Heya Shen, what's up?" Ruby asked, curious when he handed her one of the items in his grasp.

"Well, first, you kind of forgot to bring the tag bracelets for the team." He said, shaking his head and chuckling when Ruby rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly. "Don't worry, I brought some. Here." He handed the tags to Casey, who gave them a close look before taking one and passing the rest down the line. "Now, to those of you who don't know, Ruby has a fake eye. Those bracelets will tell her where you are, that way she's very unlikely to friendly fire you, and if you give her accurate callouts, I'm sure she'd be able to assist you even if she can't directly see the opposition."

Handing Ruby another bundle, Shen smirked as the tell-tale redness of embarrassment shot across her face, and Shen couldn't resist a little teasing. "Maybe don't forget your ear protection next time as well, hmm?" He gently prodded Ruby in the ribs, chuckling at the redness of her face before passing her his last little gift.

"Now, that in your hands Ruby is a salvaged bit of kit I took from one of the Skeleton Suits we had, and you can thank Casey for breaking it!" Shen jested, though the smile on his face off-set the stinging tone he used. "Since the armor was beyond repair, Central seemed all too happy for me to pull it apart, and I figured you'd appreciate the grapple function this little number has. Both of you." Shen gestured towards Casey, who was in his own Skeleton Suit, fondly remembering the original suit, and wincing as he remembered the circumstances for breaking it, though he was happy he wouldn't have to slow down to let Ruby keep up when he grappled onto buildings.

"So, how does it actually work?" Ruby asked, strapping it to her arm and looking it over closely. Reaching over, Shen pointed out a few well-hidden buttons.

"That one fires, that one reels you in, and that one cuts the line in emergencies. Considering the material used for the rope was strong enough to pull Casey over there around, it'll be just fine for your weight, though it might be a bit disorienting. Now, I've held the Skyranger up long enough, good luck, I'll be watching from the Geoscape room." Shen left with a wave over his shoulder, watching until the ramp was sealed and Ruby's smiling face disappeared behind cold steel, letting his face drop into a frown.

"And please, come back alive."

* * *

**A word of warning. This story will be a bit brutal. I will have warnings for the chapters that deal with some of the worst stuff, just know that Chryssalid's are scary, and if a chapter has a warning, and you are squeamish, I'd recommend you keep your eyes closed for the marked section. I'll probably mark it with something like *BRUTAL SCENE START* and *BRUTAL SCENE END* but I don't know.**

**If you just want fluff of Ruby being an Engineer and building stuff, that'll still happen. but Ruby isn't going to just have sunshine and daisies being in XCOM.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Okay, first proper fight. Now, a lot of XCOM stories seem to forget the Commander exists and is the one to order people around. In this story, the Commander actually bloody well commands. I do kind of want to hear your opinions on the command style, I think it's a good interpretation for how the Commander does stuff, and body cameras/drones are likely options for the Commander to use to keep up-to-date and give orders, without having to state the obvious, like "Shoot that alien."**

**Also, please, don't be afraid to criticize, I won't take it the wrong way if you're constructive about it. Just saying a scene is terrible isn't helpful, and that's when I will get snippy at ya, but if you can, just tell me what you specifically didn't like and make a suggestion for a better way to do it. I know Najex, Alucard and several others have suggested more than their share of criticism on my other stories and I love 'em for it!**

**But, what I won't accept is bashing for the sake of bashing. If you don't like the story, or the genre, or just fanfiction in general, keep that to yourself, please.**

**And, on with the chapter...**

_**Chapter 3**_

* * *

"Alright, listen up everyone."

The voice coming from the earpiece Ruby was given made the girl jump, almost dropping the rifle in her hands in surprise and sighing in relief that she put the earpiece in her normal ears rather than her Faunus ones. "The aliens are attacking New York, and this time they're just there to cause chaos and murder people. We need you to get in there, get as many civilians out as you can, and teach those aliens just how bad an idea it was trying to attack us there. Now, alongside the six of you, I'm sure you've all noticed the new sniper. You can make your own introductions to each other, but you can rest assured that the rumours surrounding her sniping abilities are actually true."

Quiet murmuring filled the cabin of the Skyranger at that, though it was quickly silenced by a single cough from their ear-pieces. "You can disbelieve it as much as you want, that's why she's in there with you. Now, let's kick ET's ass out of that city, Oo-rah." The last sound the Commander made was matched by the other soldiers in the ship.

"Well, as the Commander said, introduction time," Casey said. "You've already met me, so let's go down the line." He waved a hand at the man sat next to him.

"Colonel Andrei 'Dakka' Anscholitz, Heavy Gunner." The man grunted out, nodding his head to Ruby when she smiled at him.

"Colonel Lena 'Vixen' Sixten, Support." The woman beside him said with a smile, waving her hand at the ones sat across from her.

"This is stupid. Well, whatever. Major Dougie 'Loco' Reddington, Assault." He grunted out, ignoring Ruby's wave to glare at the wall.

"Ahh, ignore him Ruby, he's just moody." The next woman along said happily. "I'm Colonel Laura 'Spike' Mori, Assault."

Waving at the woman, Ruby looked around, frowning when she saw only 5 people. "Didn't the Commander say "alongside the 6 of you"? Does that mean the pilot's joining us or something?" Ruby asked, tilting her head when Casey chuckled at her.

"Oh right, you've never met a MEC before. Hey E-DIE, introduce yourself!" He yelled towards the front of the ship, and Ruby watched with surprise as a machine, at least the same size as a Paladin, turned to look at them, and Ruby noted that it was almost like the pilot was melded into the suit, his head being the only human part visible, which Ruby frowned at, considering it a serious design flaw, especially against a sniper like her.

"Hello there." A strangely light voice greeted her. "I'm E-DIE, a tasteless joke I assure you." The man said, watching with a smile as Ruby zipped over to him, examining his MEC in great detail, all but bouncing off of him in her attempts to look at his body.

"Hi! Oh, how does it work? Just hydraulics wouldn't work, and mechashift is out since, y'know, that doesn't exist here, but then how would you...AH!" Ruby yelped when Casey dragged her back by the hood.

"Maybe save your examination until afterwards. I'm sure E-DIE would love for you to go over his suit when it's damaged. As for how it works, you'd have to ask Shen about that. Now, as you've probably forgotten, the only person here left to introduce themselves is yourself." He said, gesturing towards Ruby with a smirk.

"Oh, right!" Ruby freed her hood from Casey's grasp, stepping back to the end of the aircraft and saluted as best she could. "Hello everyone, I'm...err...Corporal Ruby Rose! I'm also Deputy Head Engineer directly under Shen, but I guess that doesn't matter out here huh?" Watching Casey palm his face hard, Ruby panicked slightly. "Oh sorry, I'm getting off-topic. I'm a sniper obviously, not to brag but a much better one at long distance than you'll be used to. Still don't understand why you guys can't shoot more than like 60 meters but whatever! I'll be providing covering fire and whatnot, and as long as you have those tags on, I hopefully won't hit you!" Ruby said cheerily, grimacing and losing her smile when she saw the only one who seemingly cared was Vixen, though the woman just seemed happy in general.

"Bah, you shouldn't be here for this mission, Central should tuck you away nice and safe in the base again." Loco said, turning his attention from the very interesting patch of wall to glare at Ruby. "15 years old and better than snipers far your superior? Don't make me laugh."

Laying a hand on her shoulder, Ruby looked over at Casey, who just smirked. "I mean, Spike did warn you he was moody."

Ruby was about to respond, but the burst of static from the earpieces silenced everyone in the Skyranger, and the weirdly distorted voice of the Commander was heard once again. "Alright, cut the chatter, Drop-Zone's coming up. Drop order, E-DIE and Dakka take the first drop, followed by Spike and Loco, then Vixen and Nixer, finally Corporal Rose. Clear the landing zone, launch the drone and activate cameras. Questions? Good." The Commander finished, leaving the line open and listening intently.

Looking around the cockpit, Ruby felt a shiver run down her back at the steel-faced people sat around her. Each one went from their normal personalities to rock-hard in moments. They all now held their weapons in their hands, and were all eyeing the bulb above the ramp with laser-focus. Watching it tick on, glowing an eerie green and bathing them in light, they all stood with everybody lined up in pairs in their order leaving Ruby at the back. Grasping one of the hanging straps, Ruby steadied herself as the VTOL went through several jarring manoeuvres before coming to a hover, the ramp sliding down with a shunt and the light ticking to red, as ropes unfurled from their positions and rolled towards the floor.

"Red Light, Drop!" Ruby heard the pilot call from behind her, and watched the first pair grab the ropes and slide down, quickly followed by the next two pairs, and before she could even think, Ruby had her arms around the rope, sliding down and landing in the middle of the group hard, using a hand to steady herself and wincing slightly at the feeling of gravel scraping her skin through her thin glove. Scrambling to stand back up, Ruby unslung the rifle from her back, stepping into a gap in their 360-degree perimeter and scanning for anything that saw them come down.

Observing her surroundings, Ruby had to stop herself from gaping up at the towering structures surrounding her, like a concrete forest. The tallest building Ruby had ever seen was the CCT, and these towers dwarfed it by large margins. And they were everywhere, like giant monoliths. Looking gleefully up at all the different windows, Ruby just fantasized about all the different positions she could set up in to snipe from.

Looking over at the area ahead, Ruby noted the green canisters around, leaking some sort of gas in the area, and the line of shops ahead, evidently where the civilians had tried to hole up in for safety. If the busted down door was any indication, they probably dispersed or died. After a few moments, she heard a thump from behind her, and twisted to see E-DIE launching some kind of contraption into the air, watching it unfurl and start hovering using mini-rotors.

But, leaving no time to observe it, the little drone whizzed off to look around a little, and Ruby felt a hand shaking her shoulder. Looking over, Ruby noted Casey pointing at the camera on her vest, fiddling with his own at the same time. Switching it on, Ruby then rolled her sleeve up slightly to mess with her eye whilst waiting for orders, switching on her thermal vision and giving a glance over the area, frowning when there wasn't a single out of place signature, though she could hear the sounds of distant weapons firing, and the thudding sound of alien plasma rifles matching them.

"Alright, Same movement order as drop-order. Nixer, Rose, I want you two up in the highrise to your direct West, the rest of you start moving towards the shops in the North-east." The Commander spoke into their ears, and the squad moved to obey, moving swiftly and efficiently towards their objectives.

Reaching the wall of the high-rise, Ruby looked up to see if any windows were broken, frowning when they weren't. "I don't know how high the Commander wants us to go, but there's gonna be a lot of stairs."

Chuckling, Nixer raised his arm, launching his grapple through a window on the third story and smashing it, reeling himself up quickly. Leaning back out the window, he just smirked, yelling down to a surprised Ruby. "One window isn't worth a life. If being up here means we save someone, then you can damn well bet I'm not losing any sleep over it, now get up here!"

Raising her own arm, Ruby stepped back a few paces, trying to remember exactly how Casey had launched his grapple and made it land in the right place. Firing it off, Ruby growled when it bounced off the brickwork and came hurtling back down. Ignoring the laughter from the other sniper, Ruby smashed the grapple back in place, raising her arm again and launching the grapple a second time, smirking when it went flying through the window correctly this time, reeling back in and latching onto the window, letting Ruby reel it slowly and stand against the wall, craning her head to look upwards at her target.

Breathing in and out a few times to calm herself, Ruby pressed the button to continue reeling, firmly planting her feet on the wall and walking up carefully. Reaching the window in a far longer time than Nixer, Ruby just stuck her tongue out at him when she arrived, clambering in and replacing her grapple head on her arm.

"You know, you actually surprised me. I was half-expecting you to just give up and walk up the stairs rather than grapple up three stories." Casey said, crouching down against the window and drawing his rifle.

"Well I'm not exactly scared of heights. I mean, I used my semblance enough to be able to fly occasionally, so being scared of heights wouldn't be a good thing."

"Semblance?" Casey asked, eyebrow cocked even as he focused on watching the squad advance. Taking her own modified rifle, Ruby took up her standing position, smirking when he looked over jealously at her customized scope.

"What, you want one?" She asked, shaking the rifle at him with a smirk. "And yeah, Semblance. Basically think of it as a unique ability, mine was petals, I could turn into rose petals and do a bunch of cool stuff. I would explain more, but I feel like the Commander doesn't want to hear it."

"And you'd be right." The aforementioned Commander piped in, making the pair wince. "Alright, snipers on Overwatch, shoot the first alien that moves. E-DIE, prep a grenade to knock down the wall. Spike and Loco, dash up to the half cover behind those cars. Dakka, get to that high cover phone-booth and go on overwatch. Vixen, hang back next to that statue and get some smoke grenades handy, just in case."

Watching the squad shift around, Ruby kept her scope trained above them, focused for any movement coming from the shop entrance. Seeing the team in position, E-DIE leaned over, launching a grenade directly against the wall and blasting it open, exposing several human corpses and the first living alien Ruby had seen.

Surprised by the sudden exposure, Ruby got a good lock at the hulking behemoth, mentally categorizing the name as correct. Watching the Berserker as it glared at the squad outside through its helmet, Ruby tightened her grip on her rifle, sighting in on her opponents head and firing, watching the laser streak through the air and lance through her opponents head.

Or, at least it should have. Apparently, despite the perfect shot, her weapon was simply too weak to actually penetrate her opponent's armor, instead splaying out across its faceplate. Growling, Ruby watched the Berserker as it began...flailing around madly. Confused, Ruby zoomed in on her target using her scope and saw that, despite not actually wounding the alien, the armor dispersing the energy from her laser had melted some of the exterior metal, which covered up the lenses it must have used to see and inadvertently blinding the monster.

Smirking, Ruby took the moment to let her rifle cool down for the next shot, watching Nixer raise his own rifle when one of the other aliens that were exposed, a Muton, stepped forwards, with his plasma rifle raised and a war cry bellowing loud enough for Ruby to hear it, even across the distance.

He needn't have bothered. Being sent into a frenzy, the Berserker swung it's arm out madly, smashing everything close-by into dust, which included the unfortunate Muton, striking it in the head and sending the corpse flying, its head on a different trajectory. Unfortunately, the last alien of the group, another Muton, took the slightly smarter tactic, backing off to leap behind a counter and start observing, keen to shoot someone the instant they stepped out of cover, with the rounds from Dakka and Nixer passing harmlessly overhead when it moved.

"Alright, Dakka, hit that Berserker with a Bullet-Swarm. E-DIE, if it's still alive, hit it with a Kinetic Strike and pulverise it. Spike, Loco, Vixen, Nixer, Rose, go on Overwatch for that last Muton."

Watching Dakka light up the frenzied alien with plasma, Ruby frowned, knowing that if she was using a plasma rifle right now, that thing would be dead. Then again, if it were dead, they'd have two Mutons to deal with, rather than one cowardly one. Looking deeper into the shop, Ruby settled her sights on the counter, waiting to see if the Muton would be stupid enough to charge out of cover and towards the squad.

After their gunner ceased fire, Ruby twitched her gun towards the Berserker, frowning when it was somehow still standing, and making slow steps towards the squad, armor smoking but holding, if only barely. Seeing E-DIE step up with an arm cocked, Ruby turned her focus back towards the shop, scanning the area again. There!

Turning more to the left, Ruby looked down the alleyway, smirking when she saw the top of a Sectoid head peering out from behind one of the large metal dumpsters. Nudging Nixer with an arm, Ruby settled her scope, letting the laser fly down the alley and catch the unsuspecting alien between the eyes, sending the corpse falling backwards with a neat fist-sized hole through its cranium, its weapon smashing against the ground.

"I...What?" Casey looked between his scope and Ruby, frowning as he tried to figure out how Ruby could just...spot and headshot a Sectoid hiding behind full cover from such a long distance using a laser rifle. Their team couldn't see the Sectoid from their position, so they couldn't have called it out to her, and that's not even counting the fact that she could barely see his head, and he hadn't even moved much. "You really are an enigma."

"Hmm?" Ruby hummed innocently, touching the heat sink of her weapon and wincing at just how warm the metal was, making a mental note to work on the laser weapon when she got back to base, considering how many of them XCOM had compared to Plasma. Surely nobody would miss them if a couple found their way to her workbench for testing.

"CHRYSSALIDS!" The yell from Dakka got the snipers attention, both of them scoped in on their area to see a pair of the aforementioned insectoid aliens scuttling from the shop in a damn hurry, rushing towards E-DIE who was still stood over the now-deceased Berserker, with a hole in its chest.

Aiming at the lead Chryssalid, Ruby lined up a shot to the head and pulled the trigger, frowning when her weapon refused to fire. Quickly leaning over, Ruby laid her hand on the heat sink again, frowning at the heat she could still feel. With her rifle still too hot to use, Ruby was forced to watch Nixer line up his own shot, the plasma searing through the air and shearing off one of the lead quadrupeds legs, though the insect took only a moment to stumble before continuing the charge on three legs.

Before reaching their target, the pair were lit up by fire from the two riflemen and support, their plasma rifles scorching the pavement and walls behind the Chryssalids, rending the injured one apart but leaving the other with only heavy singes on its carapace, letting it finish its charge and reach melee range of their MEC. Swinging its legs, the Chryssalid struck its target, aiming for the torso and head and ignoring the metal arms and legs.

E-DIE brought an arm up to guard against the strike, watching as the Chryssalid's legs sunk straight into the metal, cutting through wiring and servos easily, getting firmly lodged in place by doing so, however, trapping the bug in place. Bringing his other arm up, he charged his kinetic strike module, thrusting the arm forwards and obliterating the insect, turning its torso into a fine paste. "Moderate damage sustained." He announced, shaking his damaged arm.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Ruby looked into the shop, and her eyes widened at the sight of the Muton standing behind the desk, his arm reared back to throw something. Without thinking, Ruby snapped her aim up to his chest, almost screaming when she watched his arm flinging forwards. Tracking the projectile as it left his hand, Ruby twitched her aim onto the grenade and exhaled, snapping her shot off and lancing the beam straight through the grenade, detonating it only a few feet from the alien, and obliterating him, the counter he was next to, and the floor above and below his grenade.

"You know, I think you're...'blowing' everyone's disbelief out the water right now. So glad these cameras record." Casey announced, patting the area next to his body-camera and smirking. Ruby ignored him and his abysmal puns, instead searching for more movement from the shop and finally smiling to him when she saw no other hostiles approaching. "I mean, two confirmed kills and one assist, not bad for a first mission!"

"Well, we're not done yet." Ruby said, waving a hand towards the shop. "We still have civilians to find, I just wish we were faster." Ruby said sadly, looking over the corpses and resisting the urge to vomit at the state the bodies were left in.

"Hey. don't think about that yet. At least hold onto it until the Skyranger, then you can cry your eyes out. Right now focus on the living." Casey said, laying his hand on her shoulder to re-assure her. "Right now we have to get the civilians out, keep the team safe, and kill as many of the aliens as we possibly can. Every time we repel an attack like this, that's one more lesson taught to the invaders, that every step will be drenched in blood, both theirs and ours, until either we win...or we die. There's no other option for us."

"Alright, Snipers keep an eye out, make sure no enemies reinforce their friends and flank the ground team. Dakka and Spike on point, E-DIE second in, then Loco and Vixen. Sweep the building and check for civilians."

Watching the team swiftly funnel into the building, Ruby slumped down to a seated position, legs crossed and resting the rifle against the window, relying on her own vision to spot movement, rather than the scope. "So I'm guessing usually the Commander would usually have you down there with them, and you're stuck with me because, lo and behold, the first mission for an exceptional sniper and since it's a test I have to have "backup"?" Ruby air-quoted the last word, frowning when Casey chuckled at her.

"To be honest, after this mission I don't expect that we'll be on the same mission anyway, at least none that aren't critical. Considering how far you can shoot from, I'd just get in the way and be sat twiddling my thumbs. This window here-" He patted the edge of the window for emphasis, "-Is about the limits of my range for supporting those guys down there reliably. If I went much further I would be able to hit maybe a single shot in 10. But, from here, we can test your abilities and keep me in range to help if it turned out you were going to freeze." Casey quirked his mouth into a thoughtful position at Ruby's confusion, trying to think of the best way to explain it.

"Reason I'm here is that despite your showing on the range, it's always better to be safe than sorry. Can you imagine the panic if word got out that XCOM was sending a 15-year-old girl out to fight? If you froze up at the first sight of the aliens, you'd be dragged back to the base and shoved into the foundry for the rest of the war. But, you held your ground, you demonstrated your skills, and, if I may be so bold, you saved E-DIE from that plasma grenade. If that had landed, it would have vaporized him. Instead, you saw the threat, and you made a shot I don't think anybody on the planet could have made aside from yourself, taking down the alien and saving a life in the same shot."

Smiling, Ruby opened her mouth to respond, but a little motion in the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she snapped her pistol from its holster on her hip, levelling the heavy revolver at where she perceived the movement, frowning when there was nothing in the room. Yanking the earmuffs from her ears and toggling her eye quickly through its settings, Ruby shook her head when nothing was picked up audibly or visually, slowly replacing her pistol in its holster but leaving it unclasped, grabbing her rifle from its position leant against the window.

"What was that, Rose?" The Commander's voice rung out through her ear, make Ruby wince at the unexpectedness of it.

"Thought I saw something move, but I couldn't see anything and my eye and ears can't detect anything out of the ordinary. Nixer, you didn't see anything, did you?" Ruby asked, turning her attention to the man who looked thoughtful for a second before shaking his head.

"Okay, Snipers stand by. Loco, break off from the strike team and regroup with the snipers to provide some support, just in case. The rest of you, continue sweeping." The Commander announced quickly.

Glancing around the room again, Ruby mentally berated herself for making the Commander drag a man away from the mission to cover for her paranoia. Keeping up her overwatch of the area, Ruby watched Loco hustle out of the hole in the side of the shop at a jog, and flicked her scope up to look back down the alleyway, sighting in on the arm of the Sectoid she'd shot, his broken plasma pistol still gripped in his hand.

Watching closely, Ruby frowned when she saw some kind of purple energy coalescing around the area of the corpse. Fiddling with her scope, Ruby brought it closer to her eye, closing her other to examine the area in greater detail, and spotting a small bulbous orange-tinted shape, shifting around behind the bin restlessly. Mentally going through all the different aliens Ruby had been told about, Ruby snapped her fingers as she remembered the stronger version of the Sectoid.

"Hey Nixer, looks like a Sectoid Commander in the alleyway. He's smarter than his friend there, he's not peeking up much, not even enough to attempt a shot at him. Though I don't recognise the purple stuff around the area." Ruby said, gesturing with an arm at the vague direction of the alien, noting that Loco had taken up a position below the windows the pair were looking out from.

"Oh, that can't be good. Commander, you see that?" Nixer responded, tilting his body to let his camera see the alley in full detail for a few moments, before aiming his own rifle in the same direction as the drone flew overhead to get a view of its own.

"Looks like he's trying to do something Psionic. Everyone, keep your eyes open, looks like E.T has a Commander who wants to play. Rose, if you get a shot, take it immediately, no need to risk ourselves to let that Sectoid show us its abilities. Nixer, keep her covered. Loco, you keep your eyes peeled for anything trying to slip into the building."

Levelling her crosshairs at the top of the bin, Ruby watched as slight slivers of the top of the glowing head were exposed for mere fractions of a second before pulling back into solid cover, never leaving an opportunity to shoot at the target.

Without warning, a black tendril materialized next to Ruby, swinging at her and striking her weapon as Ruby brought it across her body to guard against the attack. Turning fully to focus on her enemy, Ruby grimaced as the form of a Seeker appeared in front of her, it's sleek metallic body offering no easy exposure to damage. In the corner of her eye, Ruby saw Nixer was in a predicament of his own, as a second Seeker entrapped him in its tendrils, keeping him incapacitated with electricity.

Swinging the stock of her weapon forwards, Ruby watched two of the tendrils lashed forwards the knock the weapon off-target, whilst the other 4 struck towards her exposed body. Unfortunately for the machine, Ruby was far too fast to be caught by the motion, smirking as she released her rifle into its grip and dived under the attack, grabbing her revolver and rolling below the Seeker.

As soon as the barrel was lined up with the underside of the machine, Ruby fired twice, the high-calibre rounds punching through the relatively under-armoured underside of the robot and pulverizing the vulnerable mechanics. Completing the roll, Ruby put a third bullet into the machine as she rose for good measure, before turning her attention to the other machine, levelling her iron sights at the Seeker and pulling the trigger.

Just as the trigger began moving, the Sectoid Commander made its presence known, psionic tendrils sprouting out from it's bulbous head and being focused by the creature, homing in on Ruby and drilling into her head, immediately dropping the girl to her knees in screams of agony and terror as a sensation best described as ice-cold needles drilled through every inch of her skin, whilst memories of her most agonizing moments replayed in front of her eyes. Moments the poor girl could barely remember, such as the memory of learning her mother would never hold her again, to moments far more recent, like watching people being pulled apart by Beowolves, or her ears being mockingly pulled, seared across her mind, completely removing the girls ability to fight back, as her revolver fell from her fingers and she dug her nails into her head accidentally drawing blood in her attention to claw the pain out of her own head.

Fortunately for the two snipers, Loco was already nearby thanks to the Commander's intuition, and a quick burst of shots up towards the window put his plasma rounds through the belly of the other Seeker, freeing the suffocating sniper. Gasping for breath, Nixer took a few moments to steady himself, gritting his teeth to block out the agonized screams from his comrade. As soon as his vision was clear enough, the sniper pressed against the window-frame, levelling his rifle towards the Sectoid Commander and grimacing as the alien burrowed deeper into cover, keeping up the psionic assault.

"Loco, dash up to the wrecked car and throw a plasma grenade at that alien scum. Nixer, keep him suppressed, let Loco get in close without the worry of retaliatory fire. Strike Team, keep moving, there's still a few more civilians left in the AO."

Grimacing, Loco charged towards the mentioned cover, watching the plasma fire streaking over his head irregularly and striking the dumpster, with a few shots going above to keep the Commander from attempting anything. Loco shuddered when another ear-shattering scream pealed out from the sniper's nest, though he quickly shoved the un-necessary sound away, palming one of his grenades.

Sliding into position, Loco let his foot strike the side of the car, using his momentum to propel his throw, launching the grenade hard and watching the projectile sail down the alley, bouncing off the floor, then the top of the bin, finally arriving on target with a half-second to go, vaporizing the target entirely without warning and immediately cutting short the renewed screaming, which could be heard even from his position a few steps from the shop entrance.

"Good throw Loco. Regroup with Nixer and get Corporal Rose back to the Skyranger. Strike Team, grab that last civilian and get them moving to the Evac point. Mission accomplished."

The tone of the Commanders voice was decidedly strained during those last words, though Nixer heard little of it, instead focused on the other sniper in the room, who had curled up into fetal position clutching her head, her eyes closed and breathing even, small rivers of blood running down her face from where her nails had pierced her skin in her attempts to claw the pain out of her head.

Frowning, Casey just looked at the girl for a few moments, hoping she'd wake up and at least be able to walk on her own, before shaking his head and crouching down, looping one arm under her knees whilst the other supported her back, hoisting the girl up and into his arms carefully. Settling her in as comfortably as his armor would allow, he all but flattened the door on the way out of the room, tromping down the hallway with his hand never straying far from his pistol holster, eyes scanning for any more Seekers or other aliens.

Stepping down the stairs quickly, the man walked towards the front doors, kicking one open and shuffling through quickly, turning his body to avoid the door swinging back and striking his unconscious cargo in the head. Watching Loco jog over, Nixer nodded to the man, who nodded back before levelling his rifle, sweeping the area ahead of them whilst moving, and Nixer followed close behind.

Before long, the pair arrived at the Skyranger, noting the civilians who had taken up most of the seats closest to the cockpit. Ignoring the mix of awe-filled and frightened stares, Nixer laid Ruby down across several seats, bucking her in carefully before taking his own seat beside her, removing his hat and running his hand through his hair. Raising his head, Nixer looked at Loco, who was just staring at Ruby., her head laying on his leg, one of his hands gently running through her hair and over her ears.

"Hey." Nixer said, nudging Loco's leg with his foot, and watching the man draw his eyes from the girl to glance at him. Looking closely at him for a few seconds, Nixer sat in silence, waiting for the man to address the elephant in the Skyranger.

"What did that Commander even do man?" Loco said, waving a hand out the exit ramp. "I mean, I've experienced Mind Frays first-hand, and I'm sure we all remember that time Vixen got mind-controlled. But, whatever he just did, that did way more than just messing with your aim or controlling you. She sounded like some alien was goddamn tearing her arm off or something!" Loco said, his voice picking up, and at the end, he was stood waving his arms around like an inflatable tube-man, before he glanced towards the cock-pit and winced at the fear in the civilians eyes.

Sitting back down, Loco put his head in his hands and just sighed, not missing the staring Ruby was receiving as the civilians looked at her twitching ears in a renewed mix of awe and fear.

"Well, she'll just have to tell us, huh?" Nixer said, drawing Loco out of his funk with a smirk. "Come on, I've seen enough of Ruby to know that she'll keep going to matter what. I mean, she has no stake in this fight aside from just following along and getting home, but she's willing to help just because she wants to, and that it's the right thing to do. Damn, she doesn't even get paid, not like we do at least! I mean, she regards being in the Foundry as her own reward, but...she has no stake in this war, and she's still fighting. She's not gonna let some sissy psionic attack put her out of the fight."

Frowning, the pair looked towards the young girl, frowns on their faces.

"Well, I hope not anyway."

* * *

**It felt right.**

**I'M SORRY, OKAY?! Having a brutal psionic attack just seemed right for the moment, something to shake her during the first mission, make it easier for Shen to keep her out of any missions she wouldn't be invaluable in. Knowing the Council, they'd probably demand she be on every damn mission.**

**I will admit it though, I feel like I enjoy brutality a bit more than normal. There's something about a character being beaten, bruised and bloodied, but never being broken that gets me. The torture is only successful if it breaks them, and if they don't break, they win.**

**And how do you guys like the combat? The direct command mixing with the flow of the battle. I was tempted to have the Chryssalids actually hit somebody in the flesh and poison them but ended up just making them stab up E-DIE's arm instead. Gives Ruby something to play with I guess.**

**Ruby is, of course, awesome-sauce during this, shooting a grenade out of mid-air, fending off a Seeker and killing it with a combat-roll. But, and I'll probably go into this in chapter 4 some more, Ruby is cripplingly vulnerable to psionics. I mean, no ability that I can remember in XCOM leaves the target unconscious on the floor after screaming in agony.**

**Well, hope you enjoyed the story regardless!**


	4. Chapter 4

**I'm so happy right now.**

**Some absolutely wonderful person, I don't know who, tried to donate $5.00 to me. It was declined because I didn't set it up properly and forgot about it, but...to be honest, it really, truly and honestly is the thought that counts. If you read this, whoever you are...just know that I'm truly grateful that you enjoyed my story enough to try and support me.**

_**Chapter 4**_

* * *

"What's the prognosis?...Doc?"

Tilting her head up, Vahlen met the eyes of Central before sighing and lowering her gaze to her tablet again. "I...do not know. Scans of her body indicate zat physically she has suffered no more trauma zan a few scratches and scuffs. Mentally, however...-" The doctor pinched her nose, letting out a sigh. "-ve just don't know vhy zat attack had such an effect on ze subj-" She stopped herself. "on Corporal Rose. Apologies, I have...had a trying day. Having to deal vith ze autopsy of Captain Hadshaw, ze current research project blowing up and injuring several of my team, and zen on top of zat Corporal Rose being so afflicted by vhat appeared to be a simple Mind Fray. Certainly, not an attack to be taken lightly, but not something vhich vould cause...zis!"

She waved her hand towards the screen, where information on the still-unconscious Corporal was listed. "Ze current running theories are zat either her transportation through dimensional barriers has veakened her defence to mental intrusions, or zat zis...aura, as she described it, is some kind of internal defence turned external, something all humans inherently contain vithin themselves. By having 'unlocked' her aura, zis defence ve rely on for protection from psionics is unable to protect her from ze full effect of ze attack. If zat's the case...-" Vahlen closed her eyes, opening them again to gaze straight at Bradford. "-zen ve are damn lucky zat Sectoid Commander did not attempt a mind control, I fear she vould have been turned on us...permanently."

Closing his eyes, Bradford allowed himself a moment to imagine what kind of hell a mind-controlled Ruby Rose would wreak, grateful that, while smarter than normal Sectoids, the Commander wasn't smart enough to control arguably his strongest asset, a sniper unseen in terms of her skill, firing at distances incomprehensible for even the best of the best under their command.

The Council was also breathing down the Commander's neck in regards to Ruby. Certainly, she was unique, and not just for her skills. Her ears were clearly visible for the world to see, and it seemed like the Council didn't like the fact that we kept someone like her out of their knowledge for so long, excuses about tests and training be damned. Fortunately enough, considering every member of the team had cameras as well as the drone which allowed the commander his view, they could clearly see that Corporal Rose was certainly not fit for duty currently, so they weren't demanding she speak with them right that very moment.

Didn't stop them from outright demanding that as soon as she was fit to do so, she was to be taken to the Commander's private comms room and put on a line so they could speak with her. Usually, the Commander wouldn't discuss the words of the Council, but since they involved someone who could be called the most valuable combat asset available to XCOM, she made an exception.

But, what really worried Bradford was something Shen brought up.

* * *

"Bradford. We need to talk."

That tone of voice, coming from the Chief Engineer, was never a happy sound to hear, far too serious for his taste from a man who was regarded as the creator of cool stuff by most of the men. "If this is about Corporal Ruby's situation, I can assure-" Shen put his hand up to stop Bradford, a frown on his lips. "Oh? What's this about then?"

Exhaling slowly, Shen waved Central towards his personal workshop, having caught the man nearby when getting a drink. "I'll explain once we get to my room. You...are not going to like what I realized." He left his words vague, but Bradford knew that Shen wouldn't say something like that just for suspense sake. Keeping his mouth shut no matter how much he wanted to just demand that Shen explain exactly what was going on, the pair made their way quickly through the base, passing only a few engineers before they arrived.

Gesturing towards the chairs beside his desk, Shen pushed the door shut and walked over, settling down in his chair and closing his eyes a moment. "When I stopped you, that wasn't because this has no relation to Ruby. However, it doesn't relate to her current...situation." He rolled the words carefully, mild anger in his tone despite how he tried to stop himself.

"Ruby is...unique, and so helpful. Her mind works overtime on projects she enjoys working on, and she gives things her all, I'm sure you're aware. But...this is difficult to say, but Ruby isn't...regarded as human." Bradford felt his eyes go wide as he processed that. "And, she isn't a human, not entirely. She has the ears and hearing of a feline. But...that means she has nothing protecting her in regards to human rights, or the Geneva Conventions. Certainly, ethically, she is protected, but that's as an animal, not as a human. Some may even see her ears and regard her as an alien, which would mean she'd be treated as one, who have absolutely nothing defending them."

As Bradford opened his mouth to say something, Shen shook his head. "I looked into this. Human rights are just that...human. Ruby has no protection. And...look, Central, I spoke to the Commander. She has the same worries I do. If...-" He closed his eyes. "-if the Council gets ahold of her...she'll never see the light of day again." He opened his eyes, sharp and focused as they peered at Central. "They'll throw her in a hole and let anything happen to learn everything they can about her. Her ears make her stand out, while her extreme perception, skills and talents pull that nail out further."

"The Commander wouldn't let it happen. Even detaching herself from the fact that she seems to like Ruby, the Commander knows that Ruby is too valuable as a direct asset, not as a plaything for the Council to experiment with." Shen shook his head.

"Even so, ultimately, the Council can push for this. They hold all our funding, she would be forced to choose. Acquiesce to their demands, give up Ruby, an extremely talented but still singular soldier, and keep the funding. Or, refuse, and XCOM lose their funding. As I said, she likes Ruby, but if they play that card, her hands are tied. One girl can't stand in the face of XCOM being shut down. She'll hate everything about it...but she'll do it."

Bradford chuckled, a humorless laugh. "So that's what it comes to? She saves E-DIE and Nixer, fends off aliens and gets mentally...fucked with, but when she's vulnerable...this is how we repay her? By chaining her up and shipping her off to god-knows-where for them to pick her apart, find out how she ticks? ...Oh god." Shen grimaced at the face Bradford made. "They'd do it...wouldn't they?" Central saw the look on Shen's face, he knew what he just thought of.

"Almost definitely. If other methods wouldn't work...simply producing more of her though those means...would likely provide more subjects to work with." Bradford...didn't know what to feel right now. Angry, definitely plenty of anger. Sadness for the comatose girl who saved the lives of XCOM's best. And...loss. He was at a loss for what they could do. "Bradford."

Shen's stern voice snapped him out of his thoughts. He looked from the desk to see Shen's face, firm and unyielding. "I don't plan to let them do anything of the sort. I-...You know I have a daughter. She would have turned nine about a month ago. Imagining her in Ruby's place...I won't let it happen. I don't care what consequences there are, they won't lay a hand on her."

"And how are we going to do that?" Shen grinned, the first smile on his lips since Ruby was brought back to HQ.

* * *

"And then, she whips the damn thing around, faster than I could even say a word she'd already fired."

Gulping down another mouthful, Casey grinned. "Shot that grenade before it went even a few feet. I swear, the other sharpshooters are nashing their teeth trying to figure out how the hell she even hit the damn thing. Size of Dakka's fist, and she shot it from...I couldn't match that, not with a hundred shots." A jeer went through those at his table. E-DIE was absent, alcohol wasn't something he liked to consume. Besides, with his bulk, the bar would be a mite bit cramped, but the rest of Strike-1 was around the table drinking.

"I just wish they let us know how she's doing." Vixen swirled her glass around, eyeing the liquid for a few moments before downing it entirely. "Girl saved E-DIE and she's not even awake for us to thank her." She frowned. "And I heard Shen and Central are cooking something up, they're both spending a hell of a lot of time in his private workshop. Vahlen doesn't seem to be in on it, so I don't think they're working on something involving Rose."

Frowning, Casey rubbed his eyes. "We should have put more faith in her detection skills. She knew something was coming for us. Seekers are invisible to the naked eye and nigh-silent with no scent, but she still detected something, she just didn't know what it was. Maybe if she knew what to look for she might have detected it, which would mean that Commander would ne-" Casey was stopped by Vixen chucking her glass at him. "Hey what's the big idea?!"

"You're the big idea! The Commander DID put faith in her skills. Think, you monkey. What would have happened to you both if Loco wasn't pulled back to support you both? Rose was in no condition to get that Seeker off you, and you yourself were immobilized. If we had to try and deal with that from our position, Rose probably would have been driven insane or died, and you would have been killed by the Seeker before we could get close. Maybe we could have blasted the Commander through the wall, but that Seeker would have killed you, and then would move on to kill her."

Panting lightly, Vixen stood up from her chair, grabbing the bottle and storming off, taking a swig every few steps. Casey opened his mouth to argue, but snapped it shut again with a growl. "Hey, you said it yourself, Red's a strong girl, she won't let this keep her down for long."

"She shouldn't have to be! Once, I asked her about her home. She's skittish about her home, she doesn't...doesn't like talking about home when she isn't sure she'd ever going to see it again...but, she told me. To her, it's normal. It's...look, putting her home simply, it's a War-World." The eyes of everyone around the table widened at his declaration. "I'm not kidding. We all know she fought in some regards, but the fact of the matter is that their world is constantly in conflict against...basically, evil. I don't even want to fucking believe it but I saw the look on her face, she believes it all, and she thinks its totally normal for worlds like hers and ours to be in conflict all the time."

"...She doesn't even know what peace is." Spike took another drink, matched by everyone else around the table. "So...she thinks this is all normal? Warfare, death and...everything?" Waving his hand around, Spike frowned as Casey nodded solemnly. "...Fuck." She clenched a hand around her glass. "That's fucked up. She's 15! 15 years old and...did she say when she began fighting?" Casey shook his head.

"No, I didn't ask. But...you saw her skills, and...she even told me, the weapon she uses is a sniper, but it's built into, get this, a fucking war-scythe." Casey took in the faces around him with a grimace. "Yeah, they use guns, or their own equivalent, but nearly all of their 'Huntsmen' use melee weapons to fight their enemies, it's ridiculous. But, the point is that she was apparently regarded as skilled with it. Considering how she regards her own sniping, that means she was actually damn good at it...but how long would it then, for her to learn how to use a fucking scythe as a weapon?"

"Too long..." Spike muttered.

* * *

Taking the final gulp from her stolen bottle, Vixen tossed it harshly into a bin as she passed it by, hearing the glass shatter as it slammed into the metal.

The other guys didn't get it. That entire Skyranger flight home she was beside Rose trying to find out what was wrong with her. Several hours of flight, not knowing if the girl would even be alive by the end of it, took its toll on her. And then, when they got home, she and her squad were just...just kept in the dark about her condition. Aside from knowing she was believed to be stable, they just shoved the team off to recover from their fight.

Clenching a fist, Vixen plotted out a route to Vahlen's medical bay, all the while grumbling to herself and swearing that, at the very least, she would find out just what the hell was wrong with her if nothing else. She might not have been as well-renowned as the esteemed Vahlen, but she still knew enough that her help would be appreciated, rather than sitting around a goddamn bar griping and doing fuck all. "-e spending valuable resources looking after a fucking infiltrator." Vixen's ears twitched as she heard voices from around the corner, her training kicking in at the tone the man used as she crept towards the edge.

"Here's the real kicker, those fucking aliens didn't even know she was with them. Two fucking animal ears on her head and she couldn't tell the difference between us and one of their own." Hearing the men bellow out laughter, Vixen resisted the urge to bolt around the corner and plant her fist into the bastard's face. How fucking dare he? Rose was the reason E-DIE wasn't a puddle of plasma goop on the floor from that nade. Or why Casey wasn't in the infirmary or worse from Seeker strangulation. Tipping her head to look around the corner, she watched the two men marching down the hallway, a shiver coming up her spine as the realized which way they were going. "Now, keep your fucking voice down unless you want to tell the whole base what we're up to. Some of them still think she's fucking human."

As she made to bolt around the corner and stop them, a hand came around her mouth, turning the world dark nigh-instantly.

* * *

"-uby? Ruby?!"

Snapping awake, Ruby bolted upright at the sound of her sister's voice. "Yang? What's...up?" Ruby felt like there was something wrong with her situation right now. Trying to cast her mind back to yesterday was...difficult. It didn't help that Yang was in her angry sister pose; hands on hips, frown, and reddening eyes. "Okay, what did I do now?" Ruby asked dejectedly.

"You don't even know? Brothers Ruby, would it kill you to keep track of things?" Weiss chirped unhelpfully from the bed beneath her. Again, Ruby had an itching feeling in the back of her head that something was very very wrong with her current situation, but everything seemed pretty normal. Looking around their dorm-room, it all seemed pretty normal. Yang's Achieve Men poster was rolling off the wall again, Weiss's desk still looked like Profe-Doctor Oobleck's idea of a good time, and...

"Okay, that's not meant to be there." A poster of a distinctly not Remnant video game was hanging off the wall, something one of...the...guys from XCOM gave her. "Okay, what the hell is going on?" Turning back with questions on her lips, Ruby screamed. Yang was now a grotesque mesh of Chryssalid, Sectoid and her sister, but contorted like that weird liquid-metal robot in the foundry scene from the old movie some of the other engineers got her to watch, even making the same shrieking noise.

Closing her eyes, Ruby counted to three, trying to wake up.

* * *

"-ss Rose? Miss Rose, are you in there?"

Her eyes hesitantly came open, peering up at the far less detached, and far more worried visage of one Doctor Vahlen, once again breaking safety protocol and standing right over her. "Vahlen?" She asked hesitantly. The doctor sighed, scribbling on her clipboard and looking between it and Ruby, muttering to herself. "Doctor...how long was I out?" Vahlen didn't respond, too busy scribbling on her clipboard.

"You've been out for maybe a day Ruby, you had the team worried." Ruby smiled as she heard Shen's voice, looking over at the Head Engineer himself. "I think Casey owes you a drink or two though huh?" Smirking, Ruby made to get up off the bed, since she felt fine, but a firm hand by Vahlen put her back down, along with the worried look Shen adopted. "You should stay in bed for now Ruby." Looking over at him, she was about to respond, when she saw something that chilled her to the bone.

There, on the wall behind Shen, was Yang's Achieve Men poster.

* * *

**Dun dun duu!**

**Mysteries! Intrigue! Racism! It's all coming into a big pile now! Ruby isn't actually recognized as human according to scientific definition. Vahlen specifically said that she was 'based off a human'. Her DNA isn't actually human though. That puts her in a very bad spot. No human rights apply to her because of that.**

**Casey, Vixen and the rest of the team aren't taking Ruby's entire situation very well, but what are those men planning exactly?**

**And Ruby is...trapped in some kind of gaslighting nightmare. This will have some major psychological repercussions even if she does manage to wake up...**

**Well, hope you enjoyed!**


End file.
